Longtime city jeweler passes away at age 93

Several years ago, as Bob Manges worked on repairing a watch, he talked about his craft.
“There’s not a lot of us left,” the New Hampton jeweler said, “but I like the challenge and I think a watch and how it works … it’s just a beautiful thing.”
New Hampton’s resident watch repairman passed away on Friday at the age of 93, but there’s no doubt he lived a long and wonderful life.
“He had the patience of Job,” said his wife, Jane, “and you need that when you do what he did. What was so amazing to me is he still had very steady hands, still had a steady mind and he still had that patience to do what he loved right up to the end.”
Manges’ career in jewelry began at the age of 15, when he went to work as an apprentice for a jewelry store in Albert Lea, Minn.
And for most of the next 80 years — save for his time in the U.S. Army during World War II — he was a jeweler.
When he returned home from the war, he attended the Kansas City School of Watchmaking before accepting a job in Rochester, Minn.
In 1950, he took a job with Jensen’s Jewelry Store in New Hampton, and 23 years later, he and Jane bought the store and renamed it Manges Jewelry.
His clientele came from near and far, and for the past 42 years, Manges Jewelry called the corner of Main Street and Chestnut Avenue home.
“He enjoyed going to work,” Jane Manges said, “and he just took such great pride in getting something to work again.”
 
For more of this article, see Tuesday's Tribune.

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