Dr. Richard Arthur Muesing

Dr. Richard “Dick” Arthur Muesing, age 86, passed away on Tuesday, November 5, 2024, at Ecumen Sand Prairie in St. Peter, MN. The memorial service will be at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, November 16, 2024, at First Lutheran Church in St. Peter. The visitation will start one hour before the service at the church. The burial will be held on a later date at Resurrection Cemetery. St. Peter Funeral Home is handling the arrangements.

Dick was born September 6, 1938, to Arthur and Margaret (Bohlen) Muesing at Nicollet Hospital in Nicollet, MN. He attended Nicollet Public grade school, Trinity Evangelical Lutheran grade school, and graduated from Nicollet High School in 1956. Dick was active in band, choir, drama, and cross country. He was a member of the Nicollet 4-H Club. Pigs were his favorite project. 

Dick received his Bachelor of Science Degree in Chemistry at Mankato State College in Mankato, MN. After graduating, he worked at The Hormel Institute in Austin, MN, doing cholesterol research for several years. He attended the University of Illinois-Urbana in Champaign, IL, where he received his MS and PhD in BioChemistry/Food Science. On January 18, 1964, Dick married Joann Elwood (from Le Center, MN) at Pilgrim Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, MN. After finishing his schooling, they moved to Wisconsin where he was a research scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He studied the metabolism of fats for six years. In 1973, they moved to the Washington D.C. area. Dick spent the next 28 years working at George Washington University in Washington D.C. at the National Institutes of Health in the Coronary Prevention Project Lipid Research Clinic. He held the position of Lipid Research Lab Director and led the studies on the effects of cholesterol lowering, hormones, alcohol, and dietary fats on heart disease. Dr. Muesing's many research papers can be found online. Upon retirement, they moved to St. Peter, MN in August 2001. His love for research continued. He volunteered for Nicollet County to conduct water testing for the Seven Mile Creek Watershed project. Dick also volunteered at the Traverse Des Sioux Historical Museum by cataloging historical pictures. 

Dick enjoyed singing and performing in barbershop groups and quartets beginning in his high school years. His most recent barbershop membership was with The Riverblenders of Mankato. Dick enjoyed painting, embroidering pictures, woodworking, genealogy research, bird watching, traveling, cooking, and writing poems (Haiku). 

Dick is survived by his wife Joann, sister Patricia (Harold) Enter Mead, niece Daneen (Wayne) Enter Uhlhorn, nephew Paul Enter, niece Laura (Timothy) Mead Fischer, and many great nieces and nephews; sisters-in-law, Jan (Ron) Nilson and Marilyn Osbourne. He was preceded in death by his parents and cousin (like a brother), Tom Voeltz, who lived with Dick's family; brothers-in-law, James Enter, Dr. Ivan Osbourne; father-in-law and mother-in-law, Edward and Margaret Elwood.