Genevieve Stenette (Severtson) ODEGAARD

SEVERTSON, ODEGAARD, THISSEN, LEGVOLD

Posted By: Sarah Thorson Little (email)
Date: 8/25/2008 at 23:37:41

FOUNTAIN, MN -- The funeral for Genevieve S. Severtson Odegaard will be at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday at St. John's Lutheran Church in Northfield, Minn. Interment will be in Oaklawn Cemetery, Northfield. Mrs. Odegaard, 97, of Northfield, died Friday (Aug. 22, 2008) at Saint Marys Hospital in Rochester.

Genevieve Stenette Severtson was born June 22, 1911, in Gruver, Iowa. She graduated from Eagle Grove (Iowa) High School in 1928 and attended Waldorf College in Forest City, Iowa. In 1930, she transferred to St. Olaf College in Northfield and received a degree in English in 1932. She returned to Eagle Grove as a schoolteacher and used her income to repay her parents so her brothers could attend college. On June 7, 1939, she married Gustav B. Odegaard, at the Lutheran church in Eagle Grove. The couple lived in Alaska, California and Iowa before moving to Northfield in 1951. In Northfield, Mrs. Odegaard was a librarian at St. Olaf College. In 1969, they moved to southeast Minnesota to serve the Fountain and Root Prairie Lutheran churches. They semi-retired in 1974 and returned to Northfield in 1986. Mrs. Odegaard was a longtime church organist and at age 95, with her eyesight lost, she made a CD of hymns she could play from memory

Survivors include two daughters, Anna (Richard) Thissen of Kenyon and Ruth (David) Legvold of Northfield; three grandchildren; four great-grandchildren; and a brother, Murley (Jeannette) Severtson of Clear Lake, Iowa. She was preceded in death by her husband on Aug. 14, 1988, a son, and three brothers. Visitation will be from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday at Benson & Langehough Funeral Home in Northfield, and an hour before the service Wednesday at the church.

Rochester Post Bulletin, MN
8/25/2008