Leah Hawkinson Torkelson

Leah was born at Frog Lake in Northern Alberta, the seventh of twelve children born to Sigrid and Gerhard Gunderson. Ten of those children survived. Sigrid had come to the United States from Telemark, Norway, at the age of 19, marrying a Norwegian carpenter in Minnesota where she had found work as a cook in a hotel. Like many rural people, her parents were very resourceful and possessed a wide range of skills. 

"My mother would bleach old 100-pound flour sacks to make bloomers for us. I would push the pedal to treadle the machine and learned to sew from old materials, just as she did. We learned to grow food, can, and make what we needed to survive. Gerhard (Pa) had bought land from the Canadian Pacific Railroad, which was sold to white settlers in the early 1900s. We lived near the Cree, a tribe that subsisted on fishing. Pa bought fish from the Cree and took it to town on a sled to sell. One Christmas he brought apples and oranges wrapped in tissue paper home, which was an amazing treat."

After coming down to the States at the age of 18, Leah found work as a housemaid for a doctor in Bellingham for 30 dollars a month. 

"I had a chance to get 40 dollars a month so I took a new position, working for a family that had a chauffeur and gardener, in addition to my job as a housemaid. The maid's day off was always Thursday. But when I took my day off, the dishes and remains of extravagant parties would always be left for me to clean up after returning in the evening."

She finally quit that job and found another position as a maid where she was treated better, although she still worked long hours for little pay.

"The main entertainment on the maids' day off was the Thursday evening youth meetings at a local church. At one of those meetings, I met Lewis, who was just home from Alaska where he was a skipper on a boat. We corresponded for a year and got married in 1936, after he got a job running a power plant near Cordova. So the summer after we married, he brought me to Alaska to work with him at the power plant. It seemed like an adventure, but Alaska was very much a man's world -- and a rough one. There were a lot of taverns in Cordova, which was the nearest town. The local minister's wife, who was my friend, couldn't figure out why the men in town kept going to the area with red lights. The prostitutes had to go every month to see the doctor, though. One woman who was a prostitute married the butcher. One of my friends also came to Alaska as a mail-order bride."

Within her own conservative Christian community, Leah was known as a consistent supporter of her three feminist daughters. 

"I have always been supportive of women's lib, and my daughters who have all been active in the cause for women's rights, partly because of what happened to my older sister, Gudrun. After her husband died in Alberta, the farming machine company came to take her equipment away. She said, "Just give me a chance. I can make the farm work," but they wouldn't listen because she was a woman. She had no rights. Gudrun was like a mother to me, so I went to help her with her small children after her husband died. I had to drop out of high school, even though this meant giving up my dream of going to nursing school."

Leah's world was shattered in 1966 when Lewis was hit by a drunk driver and suffered massive physical trauma. His face was reconstructed from surgeries, and his rehabilitation was long and slow. 

"But we moved to the San Francisco Bay area in 1968 so he could return to his job as an executive with the airlines. It was a time when many young people were rebelling, and it was a time when my world was falling apart. I had to assume so many new responsibilities since Lewis was still very weak, and my two high school children were finding their way in a very different world. But it was not all bad. I learned new things. We were the only Scandinavians in a predominantly Italian and Jewish neighborhood in the suburb of Sunnyvale. We were teetotalers, but we decided that it would be important to have a glass of wine with our Italian neighbors to not be rude. When our son was arrested and taken to juvenile hall, I also learned that even good parents can have children that get into trouble. We saw a family counselor and I learned that sometimes I intervened too much to achieve peace at any cost. I tended to avoid conflict, which is not always the healthy way to go."

Throughout the years, Leah inspired countless people, including her five children, seven grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren, and many nieces and nephews, in part because she remained very curious about people and open to learning throughout her life. 

"Without my faith, I could not have survived losses, and particularly the loss of my husband, Lewie, who died right after he retired. I felt robbed of my identity as a wife and also felt quite abandoned. Norma Breum became one of the most influential people in my life at that time because she was the one who encouraged me to lead a women's Bible study group. I had very little confidence, so this was quite a challenge. But the women learned to support each other, and I discovered that I had some leadership skills and that part of being a good leader is listening to others. Through my faith, I learned to face and find purpose in hard times. I must say that I continue to really enjoy life."

Written by Jan Haaken, based on an interview carried out in 2008 when Leah was 92.