Ethel Leola Bergstrom 1915 - 2006

BERGSTROM, MATSON, PHIPPS

Posted By: Connie Swearingen-volunteer (email)
Date: 12/23/2016 at 23:30:46

Sioux City Journal
4 June 2006

ONAWA, Iowa -- Ethel L. Bergstrom, 91, of Onawa died Thursday, June 1, 2006, at Burgess Health Center in Onawa.

Services will be 10:30 a.m. Monday at First Christian Church in Onawa, with Pastor Dennis Olsen officiating. Burial will be in Onawa Cemetery. Visitation will be 6 to 8 p.m. today at Pearson Funeral Home in Onawa.

Ethel Leola Phipps was born on New Year's Day 1915 on a farm north of Onawa in Ashton Township, the daughter of Lee and Mollie Amelia (Matson) Phipps. After her marriage in 1940, she made her home there until failing health forced her to move into Elmwood Care Centre in 2002. Her parents had moved back to Monona County after homesteading several years in Montana. Mollie Matson was the daughter of Swedish immigrants from Hartington, Neb. Lee Phipps' parents had moved to Monona County in the 1880s from Page County, Iowa.

Ethel was the second of eight siblings, but the death in 1921 of her sister, Helen, who was two years older, made her the eldest. She attended rural country schools, recalling how they would at times walk across the ice of the Little Sioux River near Kennebec, Iowa, to get to school in the winter. She graduated from Castana (Iowa) High School, boarding with her great-uncle and aunt, Nels and Mary Pearson, during the week.

After high school, Ethel attended extension courses in Denison, Iowa, and obtained a teacher's certificate. Living at home, she helped raise her younger siblings and taught at a country school one mile south of the farm located by West Fork Ditch. Her pupils included four of her younger siblings.

On May 18, 1940, she married Fred Edwin Bergstrom at First Christian Church in Onawa. They moved first to a house on the farm of her in-laws, and then a mile south to the present home in May 1941, shortly before the birth of their first child. They were farmers through and through. Upon the death of her husband on Oct. 12, 1969, Ethel continued to operate and manage the farm.

Ethel was a member of First Christian Church and the American Legion Auxiliary in Onawa. In the many years after the departure of her youngest child, she was very active in church and volunteer activities, including the Onawa Public Library and Burgess Hospital Auxiliary. She was a member of the Loess Hills Historical Society, and enjoyed the fellowship of many ladies through her work. In later years, she also had the opportunity to travel to Sweden, Finland, Hawaii and to both coasts. Some of these trips were for the purpose of attending graduations and weddings of her grandchildren.

Six children were born to Ethel and Fred's union, Dr. Richard F. and his wife, Sheryl, of Fremont, Neb., Patricia Ann and her husband, Dr. Charles Smith, of Fort Collins, Colo., Dr. Thomas E. and his wife, Deborah, of Winterset, Iowa, John S. of Ithica, N.Y., Robert J. and Mary K. and her husband, Jay Larson, of Seattle, Wash. "Bob" was killed in a traffic accident in 1977 at the age of 22 while still a student at the University of Iowa.

She is also survived by nine grandchildren; six great-grandchildren; two brothers and their wives, Harold and Ruby Phipps of Onawa and Ralph and Janette Phipps of Iowa City, Iowa; a sister and her husband, Betty and Cliff Kallenbach of Eugene, Ore.; many nieces and nephews and a host of friends.

She was preceded in death by her parents; her husband, Fred; three younger brothers; her son, Bob in 1977; and a grandchild in 1997, Edwin T. "Ted" Bergstrom from a traffic accident at the age of 21.

Ethel truly came from the soil and rural heritage of Monona County and to its soil she now returns.

Memorial contributions may be made to the Onawa Public Library and Burgess Health Center in Onawa.