Fern Overvold

Fern Overvold was born in Cresco, Iowa, a small Norwegian farming community in Northeast Iowa in 1929. Close to nature and affording many peaceful hours of stillness, her creative imagination was born. It would bloom and flourish later as a gifted writer, poet, photographer and painter. Her older brother, Spencer, was her best friend and she greatly admired her paternal grandmother, Carrie.

After spending her elementary grades in a one room schoolhouse, her parents, Carl John Landswerk and Ruth Robinson Landswerk sent her to Bethany Lutheran High School, a boarding school in Mankato, MN. An academically excellent school, it gave her the education to hone her skills, while providing a sheltered environment for the girl just off the farm. She thrived and was an excellent student. After Bethany, she attended Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, where her special delight was being invited to pledge the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority.

After Drake, she moved up to Minneapolis to work. It was there that she met her future husband, Roland Ernest Overvold of Moorhead, Minnesota. After serving in World War II, he completed a business degree at the University of Minnesota and was hired by General Motors. They were married in 1950 and welcomed son, Chris Roland in 1951. In 1953, daughter Carolyn Jean (now Carolyn Pearson) was born and in 1954, Lee Ernest joined the family. They enjoyed life in Bloomington, Minnesota, where both boys became excellent skiers.

Fern read voraciously and would often initiate discussions at the dinner table about local and national news. Both she and daughter Carolyn were in Garden Clubs. Roland was in the Army Reserve in addition to his job at General Motors.

A business transfer took them to St, Louis, Missouri in 1971. Fern loved the warmer weather and thoroughly enjoyed their time there.

A subsequent business transfer took them to Minot, North Dakota, where Roland fulfilled a lifelong dream of earning a private pilot’s license and Fern started back to college to complete her degree. Sadly, it was during those years that Roland developed leukemia and he passed away in January 1979.

Having always loved the ocean and a warm climate, Fern moved to Boca Raton, Florida, where she settled into a beautiful apartment across A1A from the Atlantic Ocean. She continued college at Florida Atlantic University, earning her degree in Secondary English Education.

Her degree was put to many good uses—teaching public high school for one year, teaching SAT prep for English, and teaching ESL at a community college.

She loved to travel and took trips to Italy, Greece, France and England. She also took several U.S. trips with Elderhostel (now Road Scholar) with daughter Carolyn.

She enjoyed many close friendships during her 27 years in Florida as well as the enrichment of some excellent churches. She led a program to promote foster care in local churches, a cause close to her heart. The highlight of each day though, was a very brisk one hour walk, either down the sidewalk and into a beautiful nearby park or along the beach. She was truly in the environment she loved.

In 2007, she moved to Buckhead, Georgia, a neighborhood of Atlanta, near daughter Carolyn and her husband, Larry, who lived in Marietta. Son Chris and his wife Judy resided in Blue Ridge, Georgia, a 90 minute drive further north.

For the past six years, she resided in assisted living in Blue Ridge, with the past several months receiving hospice care. She passed peacefully on Saturday, March 21st with son Chris at her side reading a passage from an old Lutheran congregational book:

   “Lord, Thou hast joined my soul to Thine,

In bonds no power can sever;

Grafted in Thee, the living vine,

I shall be Thine forever.”

Although she wrote many essays and poems that were published, it’s this unpublished one that expresses her deepest and most important truth. Written in a letter to her daughter in 1981 to describe what she wanted her funeral to be like, she wrote:

Freedom

We are not really free to offer our will to Christ until we are born of the Spirit, and become so desirous of His presence that our greatest freedom becomes a total surrender of our will and the seeking of His will. Then the paradox becomes evident, true freedom is living in Christ, in His will, His mind in us, with our unity in Him our highest goal and greatest joy.

Fern will be buried at Ft. Snelling National Cemetery in St. Paul, Minnesota alongside her husband, Lt. Colonel Roland E. Overvold.

She is survived by son Chris R. Overvold and his wife Judy, of Augusta, GA and Blue Ridge, GA., daughter Carolyn Pearson and her husband Larry of Marietta, GA, grandsons Benjamin Pearson and wife Rhianna of Salt Lake City, UT, and Gabriel Pearson of Marietta, GA.

Daughter-in-law Deanne Overvold (of deceased son Lee Ernest Overvold) lives in Huntington Beach, CA with grandsons William Overvold and Tyler Overvold.