Julie McDonald Comment: Sweden Native in Chehalis Celebrates a century of life
By Julie McDonald / For The Chronicle
A century ago, on January 11, 1922, Axel and Johanna Pettersson welcomed a girl into their home along the Baltic Sea on Sweden’s southeast coast, the fourth of what would grow into a family of 10 children.
When she trudged through pastures and avoided droppings from pets on the way to school in the small fishing village of Brantevik, young Emma Elizabet “Lisa” Pettersson never thought she would spend more than half her life in the United States.
But love changes everything, and a persistent suitor dragged her across the ocean to America and western Washington.
One week ago today, Lisa (Pettersson) Blomdahl celebrated her 100th birthday in her house with a view of her adoptive home Chehalis with her adult children, David Blomdahl and Anne Peterson. Valuable friends Suzi Vander Stoep, Hank and Jenny Kirk and Barbara Mason came by.
Lisa grew up near Brantevik, once home to Sweden’s largest fishing fleet. Her bedroom looked out over the Baltic Sea, where the waves froze during cold winters and created mountains of ice. Her hard-working father, who erected a retaining wall that buffered their family’s home from the stormy sea, delivered mail in Skåne County – first on foot, then by bicycle and finally with a bus fleet that he owned and operated. Her mother cooked fresh fish, dishes of Swedish meatballs and other yummy meals on a wood-burning stove with an oven for baking. Downstairs, the electricity lit up the rooms. Upstairs, her six brothers hid in a bedroom, their feet warmed by jugs of hot water that froze during the night.
“I had a happy childhood,” said Lisa, who also had three sisters. “We looked up to our dad. He was special.”
It was her mother too. “She took care of us. She was the most wonderful cook.”
She enjoyed helping her mother in the house, setting the table for a dozen at each meal, keeping the house neat and tidy. “I like to see things that are nice,” she said.
The children learned to swim in the fishing port in Brantevik, although she taught herself by holding a board and kicking. During the summers, they played on the rocky shore and swam in the Baltic Sea, which warmed to almost 70 degrees.
After seven years of education, instead of eight, she and two other girls passed tests that enabled them to go to high school, which Lisa called “college.” They took a bus to the school in nearby Simrishamn. She studied English and German, although she liked German more. She enjoyed her lessons and after graduating as a 17-year-old started working at the Royal Post Office, where the post offices functioned as banks. She worked for 15 years as a cashier and went up to the supervisor and sorted mail to deliver through six smaller post offices. Today she still receives a pension from Sweden.
During the early 1940s, Lisa remembered that the roofs and walls of her home were shaking when planes from Norway flew overhead and woke them up. Although both Sweden and Norway declared neutrality during World War II, the Germans invaded Norway on April 9, 1940.
“We’ve got used to it,” she said.
One morning when the family was eating breakfast, there was a knock on the door. A German man, his wife and several children stood outside seeking asylum. Her father rushed them in and then notified the authorities.
“We were not allowed to help them,” she said. Her father took the family to the authorities, but they were allowed to stay in Sweden.
The Pettersson family went to a small Baptist church next to their home, where Lisa performed in a string band, sang and lumped on a guitar, which her aunt taught her to play. After a long day at the post office on New Year’s Eve 1946, Lisa refused her sister’s request to attend the Night of the Church service where an American evangelist was speaking.
“I was tired,” she recalled. “I said, ‘I can not stand tonight.’ But my older brother said, “Go. It only takes an hour.”
In church, George Blomdahl, wearing blue trousers and a sweater, spoke about the Lord, and the pastor asked Lisa to sing a song. The petite young blonde played her guitar and sang in an angelic voice, which aroused the interest of the Seattle native who had served with the US Army Air Force in the British Caribbean. After graduation, he visited Sweden to look for relatives of his parents, Erik and Anna Blomdahl. He attended the Bible University in Stockholm and traveled for several months as an evangelist. His itinerary indicated a stop at Brantevik Church. When the service was over, he approached Lisa and asked if he could see her.
“I thought he was handsome,” she recalled the first time she saw the usual 5-foot-11 man with brown hair and hazel eyes. “I could not understand how he learned the Swedish language after he came to Sweden.”
The next morning, George knocked on the family’s door to meet Lisa. He later stopped at the post office where she worked, so often that her co-workers teased her about it. He cycled the four miles between Simrishamn and Brantevik.
They corresponded when he returned to Seattle in 1947 to study photojournalism at the University of Washington, where he played clarinet in the marching band, ran the photo lab and served as the school newspaper’s photographer.
After graduating with a bachelor’s degree, George returned to Sweden to work as a journalist and freelance photographer and resumed his relationship with Lisa.
As part of a Christian string band, Lisa traveled to small communities throughout southern Sweden and sang and played guitar at evangelistic meetings.
“It was not easy for me to think that I would leave,” she said.
Her parents liked George, she said, “but they wondered why in the world he would spend money to go over and meet a girl.”
He traveled again to Seattle at the end of January 1952 but returned around Christmas for his third trip to Sweden. After a visit from Saint Nick, the Pettersson family heard a knock on the door and opened it to find a man dressed as Santa Claus, which created confusion because Santa had already visited. Lisa’s sister then recognized George by his neck.
While cycling one day, pushing against a strong wind, George asked God for guidance on whether to propose to Lisa. Suddenly the wind shifted 180 degrees and he felt that God had blessed the marriage.
After seven years and three trips to Sweden, George got engaged. They got engaged on the first of May and got married on July 25, 1953 in a Lutheran church in Malmö, Sweden, a city in southern Sweden with a cobblestone square and a magnificent Renaissance castle built by Danes in the 16th century.
“My mother was sick at the time,” Lisa said. “She could not come to the wedding.”
Next week I will share more of Lisa (Pettersson) Blomdahl’s story about her life in America.
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, can be reached at [email protected].