‘Good Ancestors’ recognized by Elders Climate Action

The Twin Cities chapter of Elders Climate Action honored three local activists with its annual Good Ancestor award, recognizing their legacies of community-centered climate action.
Elders Climate Action is a national organization founded in 2014 to mobilize elders to address climate change for the well-being of future generations. The Twin Cities chapter was started in 2020 by Kathryn Ringham who resides in the East Harriet neighborhood in Minneapolis and Pat Samples of Brooklyn Center. The group holds monthly meetings with climate speakers, advocates for climate legislation, gives presentations at schools and libraries, and works to inform people about climate action.
For the last two years, Elders Climate Action has presented individuals who demonstrate a lifelong commitment to climate action and community building with the Good Ancestor award. The group holds their only in-person meeting in September, known as Grandparents’ Month, to give out the awards. Last fall, they gave the award to three elders with impactful legacies working toward a more sustainable future in their communities in a ceremony on Sept. 26, 2025.
Ringham, the leader of the Twin Cities chapter, said the award is a way “to identify people who need recognition and acknowledgement for their work, not only in climate, but more of a lifelong pattern of thinking beyond themselves.”
Craig Neal, co-founder of the Center for Purposeful Leadership and a member of Elders Climate Action, was nominated for the Good Ancestor award by Paul Thompson, the chair of the Twin Cities chapter’s legislative team.
Thompson said he nominated Neal to highlight his commitment to bringing people together.
“He’s really been a champion to get urban agriculture on a real local basis,” Thompson said. “It’s really quite remarkable.”
Neal operates a community sponsored garden in his Linden Hills neighborhood, where he and his wife Patricia grow food and flowers for 13 families totalling 53 people. Each family collects weekly harvests of produce May through October. Families purchase shares to help pay for supplies and volunteer to help grow the flowers and produce.
Neal says that this model can help reduce the environmental footprint of food production.
“Everybody has to walk to get their share every week, so they’re not driving,” Neal said. “We’re not driving from a farm out of the city. Everything that leaves our garden comes back to us, except what’s eaten. So everything’s reused.”

PAUL THOMPSON
Thompson, who lives in Edina, was nominated for the Good Ancestor award in a consensus decision by members of Elders Climate Action, particularly his legislative team, to recognize his lifelong commitment to environmental work.
Thompson was a Minneapolis public schools teacher for 25 years and a former board member at Returned Peace Corps Volunteers for Environmental Action. He’s a founder and co-director at Cool Planet.
The goal of Cool Planet is to bring communities together and encourage them to advocate for the environment in their community, according to Thompson.
“We want people to get outside, be healthy, take care of themselves, but meet your neighbors and plan activities that bring people together,” Thompson said. “We ski, we bike, we play frisbee, but we also attend city council meetings.”
As the chair of Elder Climate Action’s seven-member legislative team, Thompson encourages citizens to get involved with the legislative process. The team looks at the thousands of bills introduced in the legislature and looks for areas where Democrats and Republicans can work together on solutions.
In his position at Citizens’ Climate Lobby, Thompson encourages legislators to consider lifting Minnesota’s 30-year-old moratorium on nuclear energy.
“So we’re trying to at least open the conversation to say we should be considering nuclear as part of a solution,” Thompson said. “It does take time to build a nuclear plant, and if we don’t start soon, it’s going to be too late.”

MELVIN GILES
Barb Rose, a member of Elders Climate Action from St. Paul, nominated Melvin Giles for the award because of his commitment to intergenerational work on climate solutions.
“I think what he does today is laying the seeds for future generations,” Rose said. “The good ancestor award is really just a way to really honor and acknowledge how important it is to not only lean on what we can learn and use from past generations, but also what we need to pass forward so that there are others that can see us as ancestors.”
Giles worked with Hannah Lewis, the author of “Mini-Forest Revolution,” and Nate Galloway, the garden coordinator at Pilgrim Baptist Church, to plant a forest of native trees to create more canopy and provide cleaner air for the Rondo and Frogtown communities. Fifth graders from nearby Maxfield Elementary helped plant more than 400 trees last May.
Giles said he hopes projects like this can create healthier and safer communities.
“In Rondo, because we are planting these trees, in Frogtown because we are planting these trees, in Hamline-Midway because we are planting these mini forests, these communities will be healthier,” Giles said. “We are looking towards the future. Within two to three years these forests can take care of themselves. Along the way it’s an opportunity for neighbors to meet neighbors. The best security people can have is to know their neighbors.”
Vincent Kallstrom is a second-year University of Minnesota student majoring in journalism. He is currently an on-air DJ at Radio K on Wednesday nights from nine to eleven.