Welcome!

We have created this web site to celebrate the life of Joan Andersen, wife and mother. Joan had many friends, of all ages. She passed away on February 16, 2006 at the age of 76.

We miss her and and have love for her beyond words. Many friends have shared stories with us in recent days that are on the one hand not the least bit surprising, but on the other hand miraculous and inspiring. For us, these stores and thoughts are priceless gems that speak of a life invested in others and making this world a better place.

We'd like to honor her with this online memorial, and welcome you to share your thoughts. Joan was a very bright and spirited person, yet she preferred straightforward conversation and honesty in sharing.

If you have trouble posting, don't worry. You can simply do any of the following:

email to: richarda@cnxus.com
call: 408-410-1213
fax to: 775-243-1628
postal mail to: 2204 Gunar Drive, San Jose CA 95124

Warmly,

-Robert, Richard, and John Andersen


The obituary for Joan, which was run in The Daily Interlake on February 21, 2006 is included below.

______________________________________________________________

Joan Park Andersen, 76

Joan Park Andersen went to be with the Lord on February 16, 2006, at her home on Flathead Lake with her family by her side.

Joan, often called Joanie by her friends, was born September 21, 1929 in Amarillo Texas, the daughter of Arthur and Olive Park. She grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, and graduated from Lewis and Clark high school in Spokane, Washington.

She attended Saint Patrick’s Nursing School in Missoula, graduating in 1950. Upon graduation, she worked in Oakland, California, Missoula and Butte until she relocated to Kalispell to be close to her parents who had retired and built a home on Angel Point, just south of Lakeside. Joan spent the majority of her fifty year nursing career working in the Kalispell family practice offices of Dr. Robert Benke and Dr. Bruce Allison. She was very fond of the doctors and colleagues she worked with and also the many patients she came to know as friends.

She married the love of her life, Robert Andersen, on May 19, 1962 and joined with Robert in caring for stepson Robert J. and stepdaughter Kathy. Robert and Joan gave birth to two boys, Richard and John, and raised them in Kalispell.

Since Joan’s father’s work had required her family to move several times during her youth, she vowed that “her boys” would have the opportunity to start and graduate from the same school system. They did, and for that they are very grateful. The family also attended First Presbyterian Church in Kalispell for many years, and Joan helped establish faith and an appreciation for church community as central elements in the life of her family.

Joan was wonderful at making and capturing memories. She was quick to laugh, had a natural gift of hospitality, and loved nature and the Flathead. She did many wonderful things that went largely unnoticed, simply because she liked to help people and didn’t seek attention for herself. She took two young ladies into her home while she had toddlers herself and helped them through their own childbearing experiences. Many stories about her kindness have emerged in recent days and have given the family much comfort. If readers of this notice wish to call or write, they are welcome to do so. The family is also preparing an online memorial to Joan at http://joanandersen.blogspot.com/
where you can share your memories of Joan.

Robert and Joan together shared a love for camping, entertaining on Flathead Lake, visiting relatives in many Western states, and the lovingly spoiled dogs that shared their homes and lives.

In 1990 Robert and Joan built their retirement home on Flathead Lake near Somers and in recent years were blessed with several new additions to the family. John and his wife Stacey, along with their boundlessly enthusiastic children – grandkids Megan (4) and Nathan (2) – frequently visited from Kalispell while Richard and his wife Ursula made many trips and called often from their home in San Jose, California.

Joan was a woman with a tremendous capacity to care, and loved many people and many aspects of God’s creation. She loved hummingbirds, Glacier Park, flowers, Erma Bombeck’s humor, her trips to Portugal, Hawaii, and Scotland, staying in close touch with friends and a large extended family, and exchanging letters. She had beautiful handwriting.

She was preceded in death by her parents, Arthur L. and Olive Park, of Lakeside and sister Patricia “Patsy” Gilbertson of Tucson, Arizona. She is survived by her immediate family mentioned earlier and brother Arthur H. “Art” Park of Kent, Washington.

A memorial service celebrating Joan’s life will be held at First Presbyterian Church in Kalispell on Friday, February 24th, at 1:00 pm.

The family suggests that donations in memory of Joan be made to the Humane Society of Northwest Montana.

These are some photos that capture some wonderful moments in Joan's life.

Thoughts shared by Joan's family during her memorial service at First Presbyterian Church, Kalispell Montana on February 24, 2006, 1pm...

“A Total Love”
In loving memory of my Mom, Joan Park Andersen
by Richard Park Andersen
February 24, 2006

On behalf of my Dad, Bob, my brother, John, and my Uncle Art who was not able to be here today, I want to thank you all for joining with us in celebrating the life of my Mom, who wove the tapestry of her life as daughter, sister, friend, wife, and mother out of one element, one unifying thread. That thread is love.

If, during this time, I slip up and cry, pause for a long time, or or call this woman who we all loved so much in the possessive as “My Mom” it’s only because I can’t help myself. I’m doing my best to just call her “Mom” because “Mom” is a term which John and I use and which our Dad also uses to describe this wonderful woman.

Many of you also knew her as Joanie, and I always love the sound of it when you call her by that name. I know she did too.

I want to thank you for the visits, cards, calls, and emails that our family has received over the past week. It has been a great comfort to us.

I’m going to share a few moments and memories from this past week and throughout Mom’s life, and I promise – there will be some humor.

Mom had a tremendous sense of humor, laughed richly with friends on countless occasions, and thrilled in telling a joke or sharing a funny story. She had a very warm laugh and an instant smile – even to her last days when there was a lot of pain to smile out from under.

When I called her childhood friend, Deon Houston, in Salt Lake City to let her know of Mom’s passing, she paused and then summed up what was, for her, the essence of her friend Joan Park – who became a loving wife in Joan Andersen, who became a loving mother of two boys, who became a loving “Aunt Joan” to many nieces and nephews, who became a gifted and loving nurse and colleague, who became a loving grandmother, and who was always a lover of animals – in a just a few short words.

These words resonate for me like beautiful music. These are the words that grace the lips of a life-long friend who stayed in close touch with Mom for her entire life.

When I shared with Deon that Mom had died, the phone went silent for a few long seconds, and then she said, “oh, dear. She was a love. She was a total love.” Those words, for me, speak volumes about my Mom, because they describe her and the life force that drove her. She was a Total Love.

That was Mom. She saw life in terms of possibilities. I don’t think she thought about it this way, but it is as if she looked at any given situation and instinctively wondered what she could do to make it better. She had a lot of tools in her bag.

Sometimes it was a blood pressure meter or a pair of tweezers.

Sometimes it was a heartfelt letter – a real letter, in her beautiful handwriting, accompanied by pictures.

Sometimes it was a trip to the store.

Sometimes it was ferrying kids around.

Sometimes it was a meal for a person or family that needed it.

Sometimes it was a spontaneous bar-b-que for many friends at the lake – often when her boys and their friends would just descend on the scene out of nowhere.

Sometimes it was a final resting place for one of her extravagantly loved dogs.

One time she was so cute and endearing in her way of showing love that I can’t resist sharing the story. As a bit of pretext, you all need to know – and many of you already do – that Mom was helplessly, uncontrollably, compulsively, thoughtful. She couldn’t resist doing something nice if she thought it could help. John and I throughout our lives had to be careful with what we mentioned in front of Mom. If one of us even pondered out loud that a purple space suit with a built in compass and refrigeration might be good for cycling, Mom would quietly be making calls to NASA the next day to see if they had any old ones lying around! She was just that way.

So here is the story. As Montanans, we’ve all become aware of grizzly encounters and the risks of the wilderness. In spite of the risks, Joan’s “boys” could often be found hiking and camping in Glacier and around the Flathead – in grizzly country.

Good news arrived on the scene in the early 90’s when something called “Pepper Spray” came on the market. It was derived from cayenne pepper, was proven to provide protection in the case of bear attack, and was instantly popular with outdoor enthusiasts. Mom was a voracious reader and was versed on all kinds of things, local, national, and world. Reading about this new innovation must have given her some hope, because it certainly moved her to action.
I remember so clearly the day I received a care package from my Mom and opened it with my friend and roommate Leif Peterson. We were living in California and we loved these packages because they always had her homemade cookies and interesting news from the Flathead. Almost always, there was something else included that was both surprising and cool – and always very generous in spirit.

As I opened the package out came her card, the cookies and then a handwritten yellow sticky note on a small bottle. She said that cayenne pepper had been discovered to deter bears and that she’d enclosed some. There we sat, Leif and I, with big smiles, breaking into laughter and thinking lovingly of my Mom and imagining us fending off a charging sow grizzly with our little cayenne spice shaker.

I received a card from Leif a couple of days ago. Leif is a writer, and he published a literary magazine in the Flathead for several years. Mom was about as quick to subscribe to the magazine, Kinesis, as his own folks – and probably was about the last to let her subscription go, long after he had sold the publication. In his card, Leif shared that his little girl Mary had asked him why he was sad the other day, and he told her it was “Because he had a Jonie shaped hole in his heart”.

Mom loved to laugh. I remember when she realized that the true calling and mission of office fax machines was to zap humorous pages around the planet. The great news is that she not only reveled in them and shared them, she saved them. Here are a couple which I know she liked.

[Men At Work]

[Baby Boomers – 60’s vs the 90’s. You’ll need to remember that we had a previous President in office at the time this came out!]

Mom loved socializing with Dad, spending time with others in their home in Kalispell or on Flathead Lake, out on the town, or in friends’ homes. Mom had a tremendous gift of hospitality and a friend remarked in recent days that whenever she crossed the threshold into Joan’s home, she felt as if she’d been living in Joan’s home for years. I remember vividly being with Mom and visiting friends. I can see her in her blue wool coat entering a friend's home with a big smile and an outstretched hand. Mom wasn’t tall, but she seemed to grow a foot taller as she extended a warm greeting with a genuine “Hello. It’s good to see you.”

Mom also did countless things for others in her life, beautiful things, some of which I’ve learned of in only the past few days. She truly enjoyed it, and was one of those very rare people who do those kinds of things expecting nothing in return. It is called selfless, but to me it is the kind of thing that God does. And I think God does his best work through people like my Mom.

I received another very nice picture into Mom’s life on Saturday, when a family friend said, “Did you know that your mom knew my mom?” She went on to describe how Mom, as a young lady early in her nursing career and living with her folks at their retirement home south of Lakeside on Angel Point, had given her mom – who didn’t drive – a ride from her home in Lakeside to her job at the courthouse in Kalispell and back home, every day, while Joan was on her own way to and from work.

Mom was driving to and from a job she really loved, and was incredibly well-suited for. She was a nurse. She worked for the majority of her fifty year career in the offices of Dr. Robert Benke and Dr. Bruce Allison. She made friends with colleagues and many patients. A friend of John’s told him the other day that he remembered our Mom. He said that he knew her when he was a patient of Dr. Allison’s office and that she was different. He said that she wasn’t the type of person that – when you needed an appointment on short notice – told you to come back in two weeks. Our Mom always told him to come down – they’d work him in. I found in Mom’s papers a story of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing. Her innovation and what lowered battlefield fatality rates dramatically during the Crimean War was in treating the environment not just the patients. Mom understood that success required attending to the big things and the small things, and being organized.

Mom also loved to capture moments, and stories. She created amazing and beautiful albums that we cherish. She was the one that remembered the funny things we said and did as toddlers. Because of Mom, we know that my first sentence was coined as I called out “Here I’m are.” from every corner of the house while playing hide-n-seek. Because of Mom we know that John called marshmallows “marshpillows” and called Cool-Whip “woop”. We also know of some more embarrassing things we said – mostly during toilet training – that I’ll spare you all from. But I will share something else that she saved.

[Mother of the Mall]

Mom also had many cute sayings of her own. One of them had to do with way she'd order wine in a restaurant. She liked a rather sweet German wine called Gewürztraminer, but when she'd order it off the menu she'd look up and say “I'll have a glass of gootzenridder.” Almost every time, somebody would whisper to her that it was “gevurtstrameener” and then she'd again look at the waiter and say it perfectly, with gusto and a big smile and both hands swooping up triumphantly, “gevurtstrameener!”. We often call it gootzenridder now. When portable stereos – ghetto blasters -- came out, Mom wanted us to have one. She bought one and gave it to us. She referred to it, at least once – and that was about all it took – as a “buster blaster”. That one stuck as well.

Mom loved to stay in touch and to get people together, and she was generous. She regularly treated large groups of family and friends to shows at the Bigfork Playhouse and brunch at the Little Red Schoolhouse. She was faithful in writing letters to nieces and nephews, her siblings, and many many friends – year after year, birthday after birthday, and difficult moment after difficult moment. One of my cousins remarked the other day that Mom was the one relative she could rely on to take and send photos. She always sent clippings and news to me from home while I was living away. She had an extremely sharp memory and very broad range of interests. She wouldn’t even leave for the hospital to give birth to her first son until the Huntley Brinkley news report was over – even though I’m sure I was providing plenty of encouragement to get moving! If Mom couldn’t remember something, it really bugged her and she couldn’t rest until she had the answer. She taught us that you have to slow down at times to really learn something, especially on the rare trips where she could actually persuade Dad to stop at points of interest along the highway. She was delightfully persistent.

I just learned of a time when Mom saw the possibility of a reunion between a dad and a daughter, after many years of separation. She called the young lady several times to let her know her dad would be in town. She understood very clearly that a moment can change lives, and that was part of her gift of hospitality.

She loved many more things, some small like African violets, some large like this great state which she definitely considered “The Last, Best Place”.

Yes, the little girl who was Joan Park, who became a nurse, who became Joan Andersen, who became a wonderful mom, loving grandmother, and a faithful friend to many knew a lot about a lot of things, but the thing she knew the most about was Love.

And in her passing, we are all learning a lot about what happens when A Total Love is transformed, leaving a hole in our hearts. And I think at this time she would have a message for us, and I’d like to share it in the form of a poem.

Mom

It is early.
The deafening stillness of the lake
frozen over by the sudden, heavy bank of winter
lingering from Thursday, the day we lost you,
occupies the near.

The sun rising in the distance
warm glow behind Aeneas and the Swans
increasing
slowly casting light into the valleys.

It is cold, but there is hope and there is beauty,
eternal beauty,
as I ponder the valleys
searching for meaning.

And there is life. Suddenly,
unmistakably,
dominating,
revealed by the dawn.

Ice fishermen,
black ants moving on a bright white table,
determined,
make their way.

The last time we spoke,
it was of ice fishermen,
the first ice house you ever saw.
Hubert setting it up, fiddling with it.

We talked of Hubert, and Vione,
what good friends they were.
Your memories were warm.
Winter was the stage but not the story.

You loved all the seasons,
Montana seasons,
Never complained about the bitterness,
icy windows, bad roads.

I remember your joy
in the little things.

Geese hatching in the spring,
Osprey catching fish,
Water skiers,
Puppies,
A piece of chocolate.

Yours was the joy of a little girl,
wise far beyond years,
who cared for us and so many more.

You remembered birthdays,
called often,
captured our lives on beautiful pages,
laughed richly with friends.

You must have watched this dance of light and lake and mountain a thousand times.
You loved it here.
You made it loving here.

I imagine you watching with me now, no need for words.

Just quiet faith that things are going to be okay.

-RPA ‘06

From Denise Combs (posted with her permission)...

I want you to know how so sorry I am to hear of Joanie's passing. My heart goes out to all of you & you are in my thought & prayers.

Your mom will always hold a special place in my heart. She was selfless, a rock to her family & anyone that reached out to her, including myself as a child. Someone I looked up to as a role model for motherhood, marriage, & friendship. You are truly blessed to have had her in your life, as are those of us who's lives she touched.

Love,
Denise

Posted by Tim Schorn...

This story reminded me of the animal-lover in Joanie...

A man and his dog were walking along a road. The man was enjoying the scenery, when it suddenly occurred to him that he was dead.

He remembered dying, and that the dog walking beside him had been dead for years. He wondered where the road was leading them.

After a while, they came to a high, white stone wall along one side of the road. It looked like fine marble. At the top of a long hill, it was broken by a tall arch that glowed in the sunlight.

When he was standing before it he saw a magnificent gate in the archthat looked like mother-of-pearl, and the street that led to the gatelooked like pure gold. He and the dog walked toward the gate, and as he got closer, he saw a man at a desk to one side.When he was close enough, he called out, "Excuse me, where are we?"

"This is Heaven, sir," the man answered."Wow! Would you happen to have some water?" the man asked."Of course, sir. Come right in, and I'll have some ice water brought right up."The man gestured, and the gate began to open."

Can my friend," gesturing toward his dog, "come in, too?" the traveler asked."I'm sorry sir, but we don't accept pets."

The man thought a moment and then turned back toward the road andcontinued the way he had been going with his dog.

After another long walk, and at the top of another long hill, he came to a dirt road leading through a farm gate that looked as if it had never been closed. There was no fence.

As he approached the gate, he saw a man inside, leaning against a tree and reading a book."

Excuse me!" he called to the man. "Do you have any water?""Yeah, sure, there's a pump over there, come on in."

"How about my friend here?" the traveler gestured to the dog.

"There should be a bowl by the pump."

They went through the gate, and sure enough, there was an old-fashioned hand pump with a bowl beside it.

The traveler filled the water bowl and took a long drink himself, thenhe gave some to the dog.

When they were full, he and the dog walked back toward the man who was standing by the tree."

What do you call this place?" the traveler asked."This is Heaven," he answered.

"Well, that's confusing," the traveler said. "The man down the road said that was Heaven, too."

"Oh, you mean the place with the gold street and pearly gates? Nope. That's hell."

"Doesn't it make you mad for them to use your name like that?"

"No, we're just happy that they screen out the folks who would leave their best friends behind."