Last Two in the Wild has ties to Mankato graduate

Before the pandemic, Nancy Vorkink Machin and Mel La Rue, residents at Cherry Creek Retirement Village in Aurora, Colorado, would sit in the dining hall, sharing stories of overseas travels, wildlife and a passion for conservation. Mel, a 1947 graduate of Mankato High School, had been a volunteer at the Denver Zoo for years and had visited the wildlife in Africa. Nancy had lived and taught in Africa, been a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer and got an advanced degree in social ecology in Nigeria.

In the early 1970s, Nancy went on a safari to Uganda and wrote about that experience in several books and...