Timothy Welch Obituary Welch, Timothy Terrence son of Norman and Elizabeth (nee Racer) Welch, husband to Melodie Martin, was born on June thirtieth of the year 1948 in Rock Island, Illinois. Over the next sixty-five years he composed a life of varied experience and accomplishment, unified by grace and ease, undergirded with a subtle intensity that he applied to all that fell within his purview. His geniality ran alongside his insistent purposiveness, which realized itself in each moment and each sphere of his life. As a student, carpenter, musician, teacher, lawyer, father, and husband, Tim lived in dedication and perseverance, with compassion and understanding. And he conveyed these values through his distinctive blend of mellowed, yet insistent, vigor. Tim grew up in Mound, eldest to siblings Mark, Tom, Amy, Becky, and Phoebe. He received his baccalaureate from Macalester College during the foment and tumult of the late sixties, in which he played a, perhaps, somewhat more than spectatorial role. After graduating in 1970, he spent several years as a musician, carpenter, and teacher - years which, in fond retrospection, were characterized by their cultivated aimlessness. As he loved to recount, he decided to become a lawyer because, if lawyers made one hundred dollars an hour, he could live on five hours of work a week. He graduated from William Mitchell College of Law in 1984, and while his scheduling hopes never came to fruition, he did build a thriving commercial real estate practice at Leonard Street and Deinard. His career at the firm included a six year tenure as chair of the real estate department, encompassing the leasing and construction of the Xcel Energy Center and the development of Target Field, as well as numerous housing and retail projects, large and small. He married Melodie Martin on the fourth of July, 2008, and their years together unfolded on the edge of Baker Park Reserve in Orono, where he experienced a renewal of some old passions - photography, songwriting, motorcycling - and the birth of some new ones, including golf. One spring, Melodie took a backyard chicken rearing seminar, but lacked the requisite infrastructure to realize her project - namely, a coop. Tim had yet to express any interest in the plan but, while half attending to the television, suddenly and shockingly noted that it might be fun to build one. She had never known him to build anything, and he hadn't, in fact, in over fifteen years. Three weeks later a coop, palatial in rigor and scale, had emerged. This trajectory, from a minute prompt to the realization of a shared project, proves emblematic: Tim built upon the hopes and wishes of others, and enabled dreams, large and small. Various and durable friendships, longstanding and recent, highlighted his career as a mentor and colleague, and he imbued his professional relationships with trust, affection, and care. This generosity came easily to him, because he found the exceptional in everyone, because he built worlds out of ideas, and because he refused to accept the ordinary or banal in anything he might encounter. Timothy was predeceased by mother Elizabeth and his nephew Charlie. He is survived by his father, Norman, his five siblings, his wife Melodie, and his four children, Zackary, Andrew, Jessica, and Allison. His life ended the morning of Sunday, November eighteenth. Funeral arrangements will be conducted by the David Lee Funeral Home of Wayzata. Services will be held at two o'clock in the afternoon Thursday, November twenty-ninth at Messiah Methodist Church, 17805 County Road 6, Plymouth, Minnesota. Visitation will be held at the church at a quarter to one o'clock. Memorials preferred to Big Brothers Big Sisters of Minnesota or charity of the donor's choice