Donna Halverson
Donna M. Halvorson, 91, died peacefully to the rising sun on Friday, Feb. 8, 2019 in her hometown of Lake City.
Please help us celebrate Donna’s life at the Frontenac Sportsman Club on April 13, at 2 p.m. Bring your laughter and your many stories to share.
Donna was born on March 14, 1927 in St. Paul and graduated from Lake City High School in 1944. Donna’s professional career included interior design, where she worked for Ferrin’s Furniture in Red Wing, and later in life, she was a real estate agent for several real estate companies in the Lake City area. During the 1980s she owned a laundromat in Red Wing and sold insurance. Long after she should have retired, she showed Kwik Trip how to sell their commodity items by being their primary sample manager. “Actual” retirement was never going to be her jam.
Known for her outspoken community spirit, Donna was a weekly contributor to the Lake City Graphic, loved her Mahjong compatriots, frequently played Euchre at locations everywhere, and never shied away from sharing her opinion about anything to anyone. She was a long-standing member of a local writers group and published several books of poetry.
Donna was preceded in death by two husbands, Roy Carls and Owen Halvorson, as well as her three children, Skip Carls, the legendary Bill Carls, and the sturdiest of all souls, Dawn Carls Husbyn. One of the poems she published after Bill passed ended with the stanza:
Then he closed his eyes and slipped away
But he’s not really gone
The songs he sang are in our hearts
And the music goes on and on
For Dawn she wrote:
When you were born all wrinkled and red
Your hair stood straight up from your head
And you were beautiful.
For her husband Owen, she wrote:
Sometimes when it’s quiet and the empty school is still
When the night bird in the tree begins to call
I know that if you listen, the silence will be gone
Then you will hear him, whistling in the halls
And for all of us, she wrote:
I am the Mighty Mississippi
Although I start as a small stream
I have been joined
By babbling brooks, dancing creeks,
Small rivers, large rivers, more rivers
Until I am the Mighty Mississippi
I am the red man in a birch bark canoe,
Harvesting wild rice
I am an Indian maiden leaping into history
I am a fur trader and a lumberjack
A small boy, cane pole in hand
Carrying a string of fish
I am a gnarled old man
Silently gazing into my depth
Reliving yesterday’s dreams
I am the weekend warrior
With his 900 horsepower motor
In search of the elusive walleye
I am the commercial fisherman casting his nets
I am a kayak, john boat, canoe, row boat, ice boat and sail boat
I am the throb of a diesel, pushing barges
Breaking through the ice to announce the arrival of spring
I am casinos and riverboat gamblers
I am the Delta Queen and the Mississippi Queen
And all the other excursion boats before them
I am the sound of the calliope enticing dancers
“Come for a moonlight ride”
I am strumming guitars and banjos
I am the sweet wail of a clarinet playing the blues
The raspy voice of an aging horn player singing about
Rainbows, roses and blue skies
I am burgeoning barges filled with wheat, coal and cotton
I am tearful good-byes as ashes are scattered
I am the mournful horns on the streets of New Orleans
I am the sound of church bells and train whistles
I am like the spine of a great nation that welcomes all races
Allowing travel from the back of a bus to the white house
I am the thread that connects the Paul Bunyan of the north
To the voodoo of the south
I am yesterdays promise and tomorrows dreams
I am “gittchee goomee”, “Father of Waters,” and “Old Man River”
I am the Mighty Mississippi River.
She is survived by two sisters, Bonnie and Jean; granddaughter, Amy Husbyn Poss, her one and only grandchild who provided her with three great-grandchildren, Kelsey, Austen and Mariah; and three great-GREAT-grandchildren (her “babbling brooks” and “dancing creeks”) Malaya, Hadley and Lennox.