Mary Margaret Eaton Skattebo 1920-1999

SKATTEBO, EATON, BROWN, HANDELAND, GUNDERSON, KROPF

Posted By: Merllene Andre Bendixen (email)
Date: 6/24/2013 at 12:47:01

Mary Margaret Skattebo
Wallingford – Funeral services for Mary Margaret Skattebo, 78, of Wallingford will be held at 1:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 20, 1999, at Wallingford Lutheran Church, Wallingford, with Pastor Jack Torgerson officiating. Interment will be at Wallingford Lutheran Cemetery. She died Monday, March 15 at Avera Holy Family Hospital in Estherville.

Visitation will be held from 4-8 Friday at the Henry-Olson-Fuhrman Funeral Home in Estherville.

She was born on Nov. 17, 1920 at Ruthven, the daughter of Floyd and Mable (Brown) Eaton. She attended Lost Island District No. 8 country school and graduated from Ruthven High School in 1938. She was a member of the Lost Island boys 4-H club and raised chickens and pigs. She also was a member of the girls 4-H club. She attended Cedar Falls Teachers College in 1939 and Waldorf College in 1940, where she sang in the choir. She received an elementary teaching certificate and taught in the elementary school at Rossie, Iowa.

On June 30, 1942, she was united in marriage to Ernest Skattebo at the Lost Island Lutheran Church and renewed their own vows on the occasion of their 50th wedding anniversary. During World War II, she worked as a nanny in Texas and as a chauffeur for the motor pool at Chanute Air Force Base in Rantoul, Ill. While Earnest was stationed overseas, she taught school in Graettinger. Following Ernest’s discharge, they farmed in the Ruthven area and in the spring of 1947, they moved to a farm near Wallingford. In 1965, she began teaching at the Graettinger Community School. She attended International Summer School in Oslo, Norway and graduated from Northwestern College in Orange City in 1972. The couple moved into Wallingford in 1980 and she retired from teaching in1982.

She was a member of the Wallingford Lutheran Church where she served as a junior choir director, Sunday school superintendent and teacher, taught Bible school and confirmation classes, sang in the church choir, held various offices in the Ladies Aid and was a Mission Interpreter for the area churches. She served on the Emmet County Historical Board, was a radio hostess for The Christian women Speaks, township and county Farm Bureau president, attended the Associated Country Women of the World Conference in Oslo as an alternate delegate, president of the South Central District Women’s Missionary Federation at Fort Worth, Texas, president of the Graettinger PTA, president of the Graettinger Education Association, a charter member of Sons of Norway Ibsen Lodge and served as a news correspondent for 50 years for the Graettinger Times and Estherville Daily News. She was a friend to many exchange students, often hosting them and taking them to places of interest nearby. She loved to travel, visiting every state in the United States and across Canada. She traveled in Europe, Japan, Hong Kong and in the Philippines as a group member of the Friendship Force.

She is survived by her husband, Ernest Skattebo of Wallingford; daughter, Mrs. Dan (Jeanne) Handeland of Wallingford; daughter-in-law, Peggy Skattebo of Colorado Springs, Colo.; eight grandchildren; sister, Mrs. Clare (Maxine) Skattebo of Ringsted; sisters-in-law: Margaret Gunderson of Williston, N.D.; Mrs. Duane (Carol) Kropf of Kimballton; and Mrs. Richard (Lenora) Kropf of Ruthven.

She was preceded in death by her son and her parents. (Estherville Daily News, Estherville, IA, March 18, 1999)