Povelsen, Egil Szameitat 1908-2006
POVELSEN, SZAMEITAT, CHRISTIANSON, SKJOLDAGER, BUCHTER
Posted By: Joy Moore (email)
Date: 11/18/2012 at 13:31:04
E. S. Povelsen died on Monday, January 2, 2006, at the Barthell Eastern Star nursing home in Decorah, Iowa, at the age of 97.
Memorial services will be held at 11:00 A.M. Thursday, April 6, 2006 at First Lutheran Church in Decorah by Rev. Marion Pruitt Miller, with inurnment Lutheran Cemetery, Decorah. Fjelstul Funeral Home is handling the arrangements.
Egil Szameitat Povelsen was born on December 17, 1908, in the Copenhagen, Denmark, suburb of Frederiksberg. He grew up on the shores of Lake Vejle in the suburb of Holte, where his family moved when he was eight.
He was the youngest son of eight children born to Lauritz Povelsen, a Copenhagen wholesale wine merchant, and Martha Mathilde Szameitat, a native of Hamburg, Germany.
As a young man, he studied violin privately with a well-known Copenhagen teacher, Miss Arlaud. Later, he attended the Royal Conservatory of Music in Copenhagen. One of his classmates was the famous comedian Victor Borge, then a student of piano.
In 1928, Povelsen played in the violin section in the Danish Academic Orchestra on tour to Stockholm under the baton of Crown Prince Frederik, later King Frederik IX of Denmark. In the Swedish capital, Povelsen and the whole orchestra in formal attire were guests at a royal banquet with a liveried servant behind every chair. He was nineteen years of age.
Shortly afterwards, he broke off his studies and emigrated to Canada. Only months after dining with royalty, he found himself in a lonely shack on the plains of Alberta, a immigrant city boy getting along as a ranch hand. He spent seven adventurous years in Alberta and British Columbia. During these years, he worked as a cowboy, gold prospector, baker, painter, and gilder.
After the sudden death of his father in 1934, he returned home to enter the family wine company, Hedobald Petersens Eft., in Copenhagen. He remained with the company during World War II and the Nazi occupation of Denmark in 1940-45.
On September 26, 1941, E. S. Povelsen married Lisbeth Heede at David’s Lutheran Church in Copenhagen. Their only child, Birgitte, was born in Copenhagen. The family emigrated to the USA in November, 1947. They settled in Santa Rosa, California, where E. S. Povelsen managed Wikiup Ranch for Mrs. Helen Smith, the widow of Senator Frank Smith. He later worked in painting and decorating in Santa Rosa until his retirement in 1975.
E. S. Povelsen lived in Santa Rosa for 56 years. Until the age of 95, he drove his car to Spring Lake Park almost daily to exercise by walking around the lake. After the death of his wife in 1996, he continued to live in their home in Rincon Valley until the spring of 2004, when he moved to an apartment in Arlin Falck Assisted Living in Decorah, Iowa.
E. S. Povelsen is survived by his daughter, Birgitte (John) Christianson of Decorah, two grandsons, Erik (Caroline) and Paul Christianson of Minneapolis, two sisters, Ruth Skjoldager and Inger Buchter of Copenhagen, and numerous nieces and nephews in the USA, Canada, Denmark and France. He was preceded in death by his wife, his parents and three brothers in Denmark, one brother in France, and one sister in California.
Source: Fjelstul Funerall Home database
Decorah Lutheran Cemetery
Winneshiek Obituaries maintained by Bruce Kuennen.
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