Obituary of Helen Margaret Peterson

Helen Margaret Peterson (Carlson) 07/19/1919 – 07/08/2017 Helen Margaret Carlson age 97, born July 19, 1919 in Dawson, Lac Que Parle County, Minnesota, died on Saturday, July 08, 2017 in Minneapolis. She was the oldest of seven children born to her Swedish born parents, Svante Malcolm Carlson and Lydia Emelia Gerdin Carlson. Two of Helen’s brothers, Robert Leroy Carlson and Lloyd Stanley Carlson did not survive infancy, so Helen grew up the oldest of five kids. Helen often spoke of the fun, giggling and long telephone conversations she shared with her two sisters. And she was very fond of, and proud of, her two brothers. Helen was preceded in death by her husband, Leonard Edwin Lawrence Peterson, parents Svante Malcolm and Lydia Emelia Gerdin Carlson, and four brothers, Carl Oliver Carlson, John Lawrence Carlson and Robert Leroy and Lloyd Stanley in infancy. She is survived by her daughter Mona (Ron) Skovbroten and sons Jay (Kathy), Robert (Patti), Jeffrey, all of Minneapolis, Minnesota and Bill (Monica) of Flowering Branch, Georgia; four grandchildren Jason (Ashley), Zoe (Chris), Jacob (Rachel) and Amelia; three great-grandchildren Jordan, Owen, and Wyatt; her two sisters Gladys (Robert) Finn and Betty Trouth, plus many cousins, nephews, nieces and friends. Helen and her siblings briefly lived in a series of homes in Minnesota, first in Dawson, then in Maxwell, next in Redwood Falls, then in Elk River, and finally coming to Monticello, where Helen graduated from High School in 1937. Here she played the French horn in the school band. Helen’s father, Svante, developed stomach cancer and died at age 57 in 1944, when Helen was 25. By that time Helen had moved to Minneapolis to attend the Minnesota School of Business where one of the skills she learned was shorthand. She worked at various clerical jobs in Minneapolis and ended up rooming with a co-worker’s family. This co-worker, Delphi Brown, had an unmarried cousin named Leonard Peterson. Leonard’s background was very similar to Helen’s. Leonard, too, was the son of Swedish immigrants. His father, too, was taken from his family, at age 56, when he suffered a blow to the head in a railroad work accident that did not kill him but kept him institutionalized most of the last 16 years of his life. Unlike Helen, Leonard was the youngest of his six siblings. And at a young age he went to work to help support his family. Leonard worked at the same plumbing company, Roberts-Hamilton, his entire working life. Helen and Leonard married in 1948 at Waterloo, IA, attended by his bother Harry and sister-in-law Bess and first lived at Len’s parental Peterson home at 703 Morgan North in Minneapolis, later moving to their own home at 1807 Queen North, and later to south Minneapolis. Leonard and Helen had five children together: Jay, Bob, Jeff, Mona and Bill. Leonard had worked his way up from the City Desk at his workplace to being a traveling salesperson for the company. This left Helen home during the week with five lively children. Children so lively they had adventures that sent them exploring city sewers and through abandoned tank yards. Some of these lively activities sent them to the emergency room, and with enough regularity that it earned the family a newspaper article listing the number of hospital visits the Peterson kids had recently needed. When Helen’s mother became wheelchair bound, she came to live with Helen and Len for several years. In the 1970s, Helen and Len moved to south Minneapolis. With some of the older kids moved out, Helen went back to clerical work at Mount Sinai Hospital. Len retired in 1978. When Len’s health deteriorated from emphysema, Helen quit her job to care for him. This enabled him to be at home with Helen up until his final serious decline. After Leonard’s death, Helen stayed in her home for many years. She continued hosting family gatherings that were important to her and her kids, and by now her grandkids, too: Christmas Eve, always with a visit from a live Santa … even years there were no small children, Easter, with eggs hidden in the most clever and obscure places, pickle making, with arguments as to how much alum or garlic is appropriate, Swedish sausage making with slithery pig intestines and skilled guesses as to the length of a one-pound sausage and annual window washing, where even the insides of storm windows did not escape attention and New Year’s Eve, where it was the tradition to pop the balloons. Helen was given wondrous memory. She could remember the names of the teachers and classmates of all her kids, many times better than her kids. She also had the curious knack of seeing people she knew wherever she went. And if she didn’t know someone, it was likely that if she talked to him or her long enough, she would discover whom they knew in common. Helen was also the person most fun to tease. She seemed never to realize she was being teased, and always laughed at her own gullibility. Helen had many close friends that she’d known forever. They would talk on the phone, have coffee together or meet for lunch. She was always sending a card to someone. Losing her friends, one by one was hard for Helen. She also loved all 30 of her Gerdin cousins, and probably because they shared Helen’s same genetic make-up, most of them lingered longer than her friends. It was unfortunate when Helen became too weak to travel to the annual Gerdin reunion up in Braham, Minnesota. She enjoyed that gathering so much. After turning 90, Helen moved to an apartment within the Augustana system. Here she instantly made friends and settled in. Sometime later, she fell on her way to deliver an apple to a friend and fellow resident and the resulting bone fracture was a serious blow to Helen’s long-term mobility and vigor. But she bounced back, just moved to a higher care level apartment. Subsequently, she had a serious infection that seemed life threating before Christmas 2015, but against all odds, she bounced back. As her strength declined she moved from independent living to assisted-living and finally, briefly, to long-term care. Helen spent her days keeping up with the news in the paper and on TV, working crossword puzzles, talking to family and seeing her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She enjoyed taking part in life and will be greatly missed by family and friends. A Memorial celebration is at 2:00pm on Helen’s 98th birthday - Wednesday, 07/19/17, with visitation starting at 1:00 at Nokomis Heights Lutheran Church, 5300 10th Ave So, Mpls, MN. Memorials preferred to Nokomis Heights Lutheran Church. The family will have a private internment at Fort Snelling National Cemetery, where Helen will be laid to rest next to her beloved Leonard.