Martha Almen Peterson
Martha
Almen
Peterson
Martha Louise Almen Peterson died four days after her ninety-eighth birthday on Thursday, August 11, 2016, with her family at her side in St. John Lutheran Home in Springfield.
She was born August 7, 1918, to Margaret and Theodore Almen in Northwood, North Dakota. She graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College in 1940 with a Bachelor’s Degree in English and taught in Fertile and Le Sueur before her marriage to Donald R. Peterson, who had just returned from overseas military service, on March 11, 1944, in St. Petersburg, Florida. After Don completed his military service, Martha and he returned to Minnesota, purchased The Truman Tribune newspaper, settled in, raised their family, and actively participated in their community. Martha was the main news gatherer / writer along with her weekly observational / political column, “Ems & Ens,” and “Column Right” that she continued to write into her 90s. When the fire whistle sounded in the middle of the night, Martha would jump out of bed to follow the fire trucks to get the story. An active member in the Lutheran church, she believed in its tenets. She was a proud member of the DAR and of the Republican party.
In 1959, Martha was the first woman to be elected to the Truman School Board. She was also a founding member of Fairmont’s Civic Summer Theatre in 1964. In 1975, the Petersons began to spend winters in Palm Springs, California, where she continued to play bridge and golf, attend church, join the Republican women’s organization. volunteer for committees, read, write her column, and entertain family and friends.
Martha was preceded in death by her husband in 2006. She is survived by daughters, Martha and husband Sheldon Diller of La Jolla, California, and Donna Jo and husband Peter Hedstrom of Springfield; and granddaughter, Martha Margaret Hedstrom of Minneapolis.
A graveside service was held at 11:00 a.m. Saturday, August 13, in Fairmont, followed by lunch at Fairmont’s Interlaken Country Club.
The family requests that any memorial gifts be designated for Alzheimer Research at Mayo Clinic. They may be made online at www.mayoclinic.org/development or mailed to the Department of Development, Mayo Clinic, 200 1st Street S.W., Rochester MN 55905.
A dear family friend, Bryan Peterson, officiated at Martha’s graveside service. He brought laughter, tears and nodding heads from those who gathered and knew her so well. Bryan did a brilliant job! The following are exerpts of what he said:
“Martha just turned 98 years old last week on August 7. I’m guessing that I first really got to know her when I was about 10 years old—51 years ago. I was still living on a farm outside of Truman, and I used to come into town to play with my classmate Bruce Heng, who lived across the street from the Peterson’s white house with the big picture window on the corner of Main Street, and whose sister, Linda, was in DJ’s class.
The older girls wouldn’t pay attention to us, of course, but Martha would invite us into the kitchen for cookies and milk on occasion (how did she find the time?).
I think I truly learned how to speak English in that kitchen…..I mean, properly spoken English. The kind of English that forbids split infinitives (“…to boldly go where no man has gone before”), or prepositions ending a sentence (Whom do you want to speak to?), or incorrect verb usage (“Jeez I’m tired! I think I’ll lay down for a bit and have Beulah peel me a grape!”). And proper pronunciation: pee-a-nist! Wrong, wrong, wrong. Martha didn’t hesitate to exhort me back than or now in her last years: “You don’t say pee-a-no, so you don’t say pee-a-nist! You say piano and pianist!”
You all know that Martha’s life was about words, written and spoken. After graduating from Gustavus, she worked as an English teacher for a few years in Fertile and Le Sueur, Minnesota. She loved to tell stories about those days. She married Don Peterson in 1944 and ultimately they took over the Truman Tribune, and later acquired the Springfield Advance-Press newspapers.
Yes, words were Martha’s life. She was always writing notes, letters and sending cards to people. There are perhaps few of you here today who haven’t received a birthday or thank-you card, get-well note, or newsy letter from her. And when she wasn’t doing that, she was playing golf, supporting our local arts—helping to get the Civic Summer Theatre established in 1965—writing her newspaper column, playing bridge or entertaining nearly to the end of her life.
It was a long, circuitous route that brought me back to Fairmont, but most of you know I ended up living with and caring for Martha the last four years of her life here.
Upon first arriving, I rather made it my mission to convert her to my more liberal California-style brand of Democratic politics. God forbid! She was a Republican through and through with all the lapel pins to prove it. She would wear them like badges of honor, better than any General! My biggest hurdle was to get her to watch CNN vs. Fox News. I had the upper hand and could control the TV clicker better.
It didn’t take me long to realize that she was a “hummer.” I came to know that it was rather a coded system, though. If she were walking around the house humming something like “Tea for Two,” all was fine and dandy. But if she hummed a Lutheran hymn like “Ah, Holy Jesus,” more often than not, that meant “Watch out! We’ve got trouble in River City! I’m not at all pleased with you right now!”
To prove my point, one day I was busy cleaning up the kitchen after dinner while she sat in the dinette area watching me, giving me “hints” on how I should really be doing things. She was humming again, and it wasn’t the “all is well” kind of humming. Finally when she said I should never use the hand towel to wipe a dish, I grew so exasperated and said “Martha, just look at this spotless kitchen. I know what I am doing. I’m a perfectionist and your house has never looked better. In fact, I’m Perfection Incarnate around here!” Without missing a beat, she said, “Oh, I didn’t know you were Catholic!” Even in the midst of her worsening dimentia, she could “bite back” with a funny witticism.
As Marty and DJ can tell you, it became quite a process for us to get her to stop driving her big Lincoln. When I first moved into the house, one day the Lincoln wouldn’t start. The battery was dead as Don—oh, I think he’d even laugh at that word play. Rollie Wegner came over and jumped the car, that I had to follow Martha to the garage to get it fixed. She backed out of the driveway first, and I was expecting her to mosey along in her little-old-lady style. No way! She took off like a bat out of hell, and by the time I backed out and took off after her, I’d lost her. Found her at the Ford Garage, with the mechanics all perplexed….we were supposed to be at Richard’s Auto.
Oh, there are so many memories, but what I treasured most was hearing her say to you each time you would call Marty, Deej and Martha, “Oh how nice to hear your sweet voice!” She loved you so much. “I’ve got the best daughters in the world!”
Yes, words were Martha’s life, reading them, writing them, speaking them properly. As I look at Martha’s life, I believe her legacy is one of understanding the everlasting meaning and quality of our lives truly emanate from the words we speak and write while we live it.
Martha greatly admired the writer Thornton Wilder. In his play, “Our Town,” he wrote:
‘We all know that something is eternal. And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t the stars…everyone knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people that ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you’d be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being.”
In Blackwater Woods
By Mary Oliver
Look, the trees are turning their own bodies
into pillars of light,
Are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,
The long tapers of cattails are bursting
and floating over the blue shoulders of the pond,
Every pond, no matter what its name is,
is nameless now,
Every year everything I have learned in my lifetime
leads back to this:
The fires and the black river of loss
whose other side is salvation,
Whose meaning none of us will ever know.
To live in this world you must be able to do three things:
To love what is mortal;
to hold it against your bones
knowing your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.
Godspeed on your journey now, Martha! We will miss you!”
Bryan’s testimonial was capped off by Bill Busse singing Martha’s favorite song “It Had To Be You.” Leigh Nelson said a short prayer just for Martha and then closed the service with “The Lord’s Prayer.”