Lucille Storlien

Lucille Storlien died on Christmas Day, December 25, 2020, also the birthday of her great-granddaughter, Natalie, at the Madison Lutheran Home at the age of 90.

Private service will be held and a video of the service will be available on our website on Wednesday.  Arrangements are with Hanson & Dahl Funeral Home in Dawson.

A walk through visitation will be held on Monday, December 28, 2020 at Hanson & Dahl Funeral Home from 5-7:00 PM.

Lucille Linnea (Lundin) Storlien was born on February 14, 1930 at the family farm in Yellow Medicine County near Canby, Minnesota, the 4th of 5 children born to Anton and Ellen Lundin (Lind). She was baptized Linnea Lucille, attended Sunday School and confirmed in the Lutheran faith at Providence Valley Lutheran Church of rural Dawson.  Lucille attended country school at District 37 with her siblings and neighborhood children, remembering that they brought a potato to school to put on the wood burner when they arrived and it would be ready to eat at dinner time.  After the 8th grade graduation, she and her sister, Marie, attended Canby High School, staying in town with "Ma" Christiansen and going home on weekends.    On a blind date, Lucille met Orville Storlien.  They were married at Providence Valley Lutheran church on January 11, 1948 and had five children. Orville and Lucille farmed together in Lac Qui Parle county, their third farm becoming the home place in 1954. This farm had electricity and years later indoor plumbing was added.  The family belonged to Garfield Lutheran Church near Madison where all five children were baptized and confirmed and where Lucille was active in Ladies Aid, Circle, choir and often helped with various events at the church.  The children were members of the Freeland Telstars 4-H club and Lucille's part in this was to make sure they got their records done and help them with their projects for the Madison Fair.  

Lucille enjoyed baking, and when the children returned home from school, she would have homemade bread to be made into toast, cake and cookies ready. When the children married and grandchildren were born, Lucille enjoyed baking a cake for every birthday.  The family's favorites were her angel food cakes, krum kaka and lefsa at Christmas time, apple, rhubarb and pumpkin pies, or was it really squash?  Back in the day, company would come on weekend evenings and a little lunch was always served. Lucille would often say, "I've got a feeling ____ will come over tonight", (which usually turned out to be true), so baked goods were always ready.  Other memories included when she would put on lipstick for absolutely no reason and we children asked, "where are you going?"  

Lucille often served Swedish Meatballs for family get togethers with a huge pot of mashed potatoes and always sweet corn and more ice cream than you probably wanted. Later we found out that the Swedish Meatballs were actually Russian Meatballs, just made by a Swede.  Her comment to that was "Oh, they're all alike!"  Be still our Scandinavian hearts!!
Besides the usual animals on a dairy farm, Lucille raised chickens for eggs and for butchering.  Lucille sold the excess eggs along with the cans of cream at the Canby Creamery and over the years, dad butchered many chickens in which the children were put on an assembly line to catch the runaway headless chickens, pluck the feathers with Lucille at the end of the line cleaning the chickens,  which thankfully, she never made the kids help with that part.  But the many fried chicken dinners were worth all the hassle.  
Haying was a family event done on the hottest days of the summer, also pulling weeds and raising cucumbers for the Gedney Co, but only one year because our backs could not take another season.  Cucumbers were sold in Madison with a milkshake treat afterwards at the Dairy Queen, bought for 35 cents. Another part of a farmer's wife's job was to go to town to get a part for a broken down piece of machinery, where too many questions were asked, because she didn't know the answer. Orville and Lucille remained on the farm after the children were grown and gone, changing from dairy cattle to feeder cattle.
After Orville's death in 2001, Lucille moved to an apartment in Dawson, MN.  In 2009, Lucille was talked into going along with Sharon to Norway. Imagine the look on Lucille's face when at the airport inspection, they took away her great big tube of Aspercreme. In Norway, they met up with her niece, Judy Lundin and stayed at her family home in Norway before traveling on with Judy to Sweden where they met up and stayed with Lucille's 1st cousin, Elsie and her family. The Swedes showed the travelers the farm where Lucille's father, Anton grew up then attended a family reunion at the church grounds where her father had worshiped.  Here she met for the first time, her other 1st cousins and their families and visited the graves of her grandparents and other family members.  With failing health she moved to Assisted Living in Dawson, then in 2016 to the Madison Lutheran Nursing Home.  Here she enjoyed the conversations with the staff and the activities with the other residents and welcomed the weekly visits of the Storlien family every Tuesday. 

Lucille is survived by four children, David (Jenny) Storlien, Stuart (Kathy) Storlien, Sharon Geurts and Jeffrey (Liz) Storlien, grandchildren Jerry (Kathy) Storlien, Lanny (Carrie) Storlien, April, (Shannon) Dennis, Tim Storlien, Becky (Bill) Cleveland, Eric (Erin) Geurts, Erin (Dan) Duncan, Kala Storlien and Andy Szurgot and Ashley (Ted) Wulff, 18 great grandchildren (listed as pallbearers), sister Ruth (Jim) McClure and numerous nieces and nephews.  

Lucille was preceded in death by her parents, Anton and Ellen Lundin, her husband, Orville, daughter, Brenda, four grandchildren, April Mary Storlien, Christopher Storlien, Brian Geurts and Matthew Geurts, her brother Donald (Ann) Lundin, sisters, Caroline (Clifford) Johnson, Marie (Elvin) Anderson and son-in-law Donald Geurts.  

This Covid pandemic has brought some advantage to the Storlien Family.  We've social distanced all our lives, being nodders, not huggers only forced to be huggers when the in-laws became family.  We also speak in code.  Lucille's words to all of us as we left to go home would always be, "Now drive carefully!" and our response with a nod - "Yup, we'll see you next time!"  That's code for "I love you" and "I love you too!"   

Blessed be her memory and now with our "heavenly eyes", we can see Lucille enjoying a big family reunion with Jesus our Savior.