George Farr, a prominent DFL leader in the 1960s, a B-17 pilot in World War II, as well as teacher and coach — and a poet once dubbed “an octogenarian rapper” — died Friday. He was 93.
Farr served as chairman of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party from 1961-67.
A native New Yorker, Farr was sent to Moorhead, Minn., for training as an Air Force cadet during World War II.
According to an article on the DFL’s website, after flying B-17s during the war, Farr returned to Moorhead to be with his future wife, Pat, and to major in vocal music at Concordia College with an eye toward pursuing professional singing as a career. When he was told it would take 10 years of training to reach that goal, Farr switched to English and history and became a teacher in Comstock, Minn.
He taught English, coached and eventually became the principal. He then was hired as an assistant coach at Concordia College.
It was there he became interested in politics, according to the DFL website,
“Up to that point I had no party affiliation,” Farr said in an article on the DFL website. “I did a self-examination of what I believed and decided I was a liberal, so I joined the Democratic Party.”
In 1955, the DFL started a Moorhead DFL club, the website said. “Farr went to the organizational meeting and left with the assignment of writing the group’s constitution.”
Within a year, he was hired as the party’s executive secretary and by 1958 was running for state auditor. During his unsuccessful bid against the incumbent, Farr was on the campaign trail with then-U.S. Sen. Hubert Humphrey and became an “enormous admirer” of him, according to the DFL website.
Farr received the Hubert H. Humphrey Award for Dedication and Leadership to the Minnesota DFL in 2013. At the time, Farr said he was “flabbergasted” by the honor, according to the DFL website.
“Humphrey is one of the greatest political heroes of all time – not just for the state, but for the country,” Farr said. “Keeping his spirit alive is terribly important.”
In a 2015 column by Joe Soucheray in the Pioneer Press, the owner of Quality Coaches in Minneapolis told the columnist “You need to meet this guy. He’s an octogenarian rapper.”
During their meeting, Farr recited his poem, “The Flag,” a poem he’d read a several festivals, including the VA Creative Arts Festival in Riverside, Calif.
