Photo courtesy of Southwest Minnesota State University In a 2018 photo, Jean Sanford Replinger was presented with the Women Who Dared award. Over her life, Replinger was a college professor, the creator of the first women’s Outward Bound program in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota, and an active supporter of many arts and outdoors organizations.

MARSHALL — She had a lifelong love of the outdoors – and in some ways, Jean Sanford Replinger was like a force of nature herself, people who knew Replinger said. From her time as a leader in the Outward Bound program through her career as an educator and beyond, Replinger was passionate about encouraging people to achieve their potential.

“She always knew that if you get people outside, interacting with nature . . . you were going to kind of blossom,” said Alicia Johnson, a friend and former student of Replinger at Southwest Minnesota State University.

Replinger, a longtime Marshall resident, died Saturday at the Prairie Home Hospice – McLaughlin House in Marshall. She was 96.

Replinger grew up in Ladysmith, a small town in northern Wisconsin, and went on to become a professor at Antioch College in Ohio. In 1964, she collaborated with an Antioch colleague, Bob Pieh, to create an Outward Bound program for men in northern Minnesota. After that first program, Replinger proposed to start an Outward Bound program for women. Her work came to fruition in 1965, with the first all-women Outward Bound program in the western hemisphere.

Replinger came to what is now SMSU in 1969. She was a health and physical education professor until her retirement in 1996.

“I got to know Jean first when I was a student,” Johnson said. Johnson graduated from SMSU in 1977. Later, she returned to the university as the Schwan’s endowed chair for entrepreneurial studies, and got to know Replinger more. “We became really fast friends as colleagues.”

“(Jean) was just sort of an inspiration to a whole group of us,” Johnson said.

Former students said Replinger wasn’t only a classroom teacher. She got people involved in all kinds of outdoor activities and sports like swimming and skiing. Replinger took regular canoeing and cross-country ski trips with students.

“We would all go out to Camden (State Park) and take these little side trips,” Johnson said.

Author and SMSU alumnus Barton Sutter said Replinger was among his favorite professors when he attended college in the early 1970s. He learned cross-country skiing from Replinger – although the class didn’t always go smoothly for him.

“I set a record for her,” Sutter said. “I managed to break two different skis during one quarter.”

When Sutter came back to visit the university later on, he saw Replinger had hung his two broken skis in her office, along with a plaque.

While Replinger could be serious, she was also kind and cheerful, Sutter said. Replinger was also “a great encourager” of her former students, especially young women.

Emily Deaver, professor of environmental science at SMSU, said she first met Replinger because she had funded an environmental science award for outstanding student research. “She also took a personal interest in encouraging those students as well,” Deaver said. Replinger met SMSU students who received the award, and even stayed in touch with several students over the years. “She was very serious about mentoring,” Deaver said.

Replinger was “a fierce advocate for the environment and the arts,” said Marianne Zarzana a retired SMSU professor and a former neighbor of Replinger’s.

Over the course of her life, Replinger was an active supporter of different arts and outdoors programs, including Ski for Light, a nonprofit that teaches visually- or mobility-impaired people to cross-country ski, and the Ernest C. Oberholtzer Foundation. The Foundation maintains Mallard Island in Rainy Lake in northern Minnesota, and hosts programs for natural science, the arts, and Ojibwe language and traditions.

“It became a great magnet and greenhouse for all kinds of different projects,” Sutter said of Mallard island.

On a local level, Replinger was also involved with the Marshall Area Fine Arts Council, and was a supporter of the Southwest Minnesota Orchestra.

“She was a very enthusiastic concert-goer,” said SMSU music professor Daniel Rieppel. Replinger also made it possible for the orchestra to have its first professional concert master, through an endowment.

Rieppel said Replinger was a very straightforward person, and had a pragmatic way of solving problems and encouraging people to accomplish things. “If I had a decent idea, she’d say, ‘Get on that. Get that done,'” Rieppel said.

Rieppel said Replinger was influential in his life, and also encouraged him to apply to attend an arts program at Mallard Island.

Johnson said Replinger had an impact on many people in her life. It really showed when Johnson helped organize Replinger’s retirement party at SMSU.

“The numbers just kept growing and growing,” she said. “We had people from the Netherlands there, we had people from Germany, people from Wisconsin. It was so eye-opening to see the connections she had.”

In recent years, Replinger was recognized for her work as a leader and educator. The first Outward Bound class of women from 1965 was the subject of a documentary, called “Women Outward Bound.” In 2018, Replinger was presented the Women Who Dared Award.

“Jean was just a shining example,” Sutter said. “I’m especially glad I got to visit her the last time I was in Marshall.”

Replinger was an avid reader, and stayed interested and engaged with the world around her up until the end of her life, friends said.

Zarzana said Replinger kept a sense of wonder about nature and the world. “She never lost that.”

“She was sort of a force of nature,” Deaver said.

Celebration of life events for Replinger are currently pending. They are likely to be held in the spring of 2025.