Archive » January 31, 2008

Daryl Nielsen remembered

 

Daryl Andrew “Poppie” Nielsen, general contractor and original owner of numerous businesses and restaurants in Solvang and Buellton, was remembered in funeral services Jan. 29 at Bethania Lutheran Church in Solvang. He died Jan. 24 at the age of 85 after a long illness.

Best known for construction of the family hotels, Nielsen and his father, C.V. Nielsen, owned Nielsen’s Lumber Yard and later built the King Frederik Inn, the Royal Scandinavian Inn, of which he was one of the original partners, Pea Soup Andersen’s Inn, and Pea Soup Andersen’s Inn located in Santa Nella.

He also was instrumental in the building of the Santa Ynez Valley Cottage Hospital, and the Recovery Residence at Solvang Lutheran Home.

 

Selected as Man of the Year in 2002, he was known throughout the Santa Ynez Valley for his community service. Nielsen volunteered at the Elverhøj Museum and helped with youth and community sports.

He served as chairman of Danish Days several times, was a member and past chief of the Vikings, post commander of the American Legion, a member of the Elks, Danish Brotherhood and Dania Lodge, and was instrumental in the formation of the Solvang Municipal Improvement District.

SMID aided in the organization of the city of Solvang, which became a municipality in 1985.

Born in Solvang on April 22, 1922, to Anna and C.V. Nielsen, he attended Solvang Elementary School and the Santa Ynez Valley Union High School. He joined the U.S. Army at the age of 19, shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

 

During the war, in 1941, Nielsen married his high school sweetheart, Helen Rasmussen, in Washington D.C.

During his time of service, he lived with his family in Ogden, Utah, where his daughter Sharon and his son Dan, Daryl A. Nielsen Jr., were born.

In 1947, the family returned to Solvang, where daughter Linda and son John were born.

Later Nielsen and his father formed Nielsen’s Lumber Yard, the family business, which is still in operation today.

Nielsen was instrumental in creating the distinctive architecture for the Danish Village in Solvang, helping to make it a tourist destination.

Nielsen’s daughter, Linda Johansen, is president of the Solvang Chamber of Commerce. During award presentations on Jan. 17, the chamber honored Nielsen and his wife for their community service.

 

Johansen described her father as a teacher, mentor and hero and said he is “a man of impeccable integrity who has a legacy wherever you look in the valley.”

Linda Jackson, mayor of Solvang and executive director of the Solvang Chamber of Commerce, said, “He helped make the city what it is today. His passing will be felt by so many, but his memory and contributions have left its mark on the community of Solvang forever.

“Every day the people of Solvang and travelers will be able to remember Daryl and Helen when they hear the bells chime throughout the city,” Jackson added.

The Nielsens recently donated the clock chimes at the Solvang Antique Center to the city.

One of Nielsen’s favorite pastimes was fishing, and he and his wife continued the sport, even when he needed a walker and a wheelchair. They also enjoyed traveling.

Survivors include his wife of 65 years; two daughters, Sharon Price and Linda Johansen; a son, Dan; a sister, Thora Mae Andersen; a sister-in-law, Marion Nielsen; six grandchildren and three great grandchildren.

 

In lieu of flowers the family requests donations be made to the Solvang Lutheran Home, Viking Charities, SYV Cottage Hospital, or any other charity.

 

Evelyn Joughin

Gertrude Evelyn Joughin died on Sunday, Jan. 27, in Solvang at the age of 77, following her recent birthday.

Evelyn was born Jan. 21, 1931, and grew up in San Luis Obispo. She attended local schools there until she graduated from San Luis Obispo High School in 1949. Her father was a local rancher, so weekdays were spent at their town home for school and then, on weekends, with their dad for ranch activities.

She grew up in a family of four siblings.

She was the daughter of Andrew R. Joughin and Eloise Dickens Joughin, now deceased. She is survived by a sister, Jayne Joughin Ellis of Houston, Texas; a sister, Helen Joughin Sweatt of Honolulu, Hawaii; a brother, Andrew D. Joughin of Santa Ynez; and two brothers-in-law, James V. Ellis and William L. Sweatt.

 

She was preceded in death by a sister, Joanna Joughin Hanly, and a brother-in-law, Peter D. Hanly.

Never having been married, she lavished her love, affection and generosity on 14 nieces and nephews, and on 24 grand-nieces and grand-nephews, and in caring for her parents in their later years. After her parents’ deaths in 1977 and 1989, she moved to the senior living center of Rancho Santa Ynez Mobile Estates in Solvang and became active in the social functions of the center.

Following high school, she attended art schools in Los Angeles, achieving a certificate in industrial design, then pursued merchandising with the Broadway Store in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley.

About 1959 she moved to Santa Ynez and took up residence at the ranch home of her parents, who relocated to the Santa Ynez Valley in 1951.

 

She became involved in the commercial activities of Solvang upon taking up residence there and worked for a number of business establishments in the tourist trade.

She struck out on her own in the 1970’s when she bought a bath boutique, The Elegant Outhouse. In 1983 she was honored by her mercantile peers in Solvang with the award of Woman of the Year by the American Business Women’s Association.

She will be missed by her family and her peers for the love and affection she bestowed upon them during her life span of 77 years.

Services were held at the Loper Funeral Home Chapel in Ballard on Jan. 31 at 11 a.m., with a graveside service following at Oak Hill Cemetery.

Donations may be sent in her name to the Santa Ynez Historical Society or to the Lutheran Home in Solvang.

 

Loper Funeral Chapel, Directors

 

 

Margaret Truman Daniel,

only child of President Truman, dies at 83

 

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) – Margaret Truman, the only child of former President Harry S. Truman, who became a concert singer, actress, radio and TV personality and mystery writer, died Tuesday. She was 83.

Truman, known as Margaret Truman Daniel in private life, died at a Chicago assisted living facility following a brief illness, according to Susan Medler, a spokeswoman for the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum in Independence. She had been at the facility for the past several weeks and was on a respirator, the library said.

Her father’s succession to the presidency in 1945 thrust her into the national spotlight while a college junior.

“The only thing I ever missed about the White House was having a car and driver,” she once said.

Her singing career attracted the barbs of music critics — even the embarrassment of having her father threaten one reviewer. But she found a fulfilling professional and personal life in New York City where she met her husband, journalist Clifton Daniel, who later became managing editor of The New York Times. They married in 1956.

She published her first book, an autobiography titled “Souvenir,” in 1956. She said it was “hard work” and told reporters: “One writing job is enough.”

 

But then she did a book on White House pets in 1969, and later more, one a biography of her father. The idea of doing a mystery called “Murder in the White House” came “out of nowhere,” she said.

That 1980 title was followed by mysteries set in the Supreme Court, the Smithsonian, Embassy Row, the FBI, Georgetown, the CIA, Kennedy Center, the National Cathedral and the Pentagon. The last book, “Murder on K Street,” was released last year. Donald Bain, a well-known ghost writer, was rumored to have written Truman’s mysteries, but he has denied it.

Later in life, she was a grandmother and sang only in her church choir.

“I’ve had three or four different careers,” she told an interviewer in 1989. “I consider being a wife and mother a career. I have great respect for women — both those who go out and do their thing and those who stay at home. I think those who stay at home have a lot more courage than those who go out and get a job.”

 

Mary Margaret Truman was born Feb. 17, 1924, in Independence. She was the only child of Bess and Harry Truman, who was a county judge at the time.

For a few years after her father was elected to the Senate in 1934, she split her school year between Independence and a private girls’ school in Washington D.C. She later attended George Washington University. She also had taken voice lessons, at the urging of a church choir leader. After graduation, she used the political limelight to launch her singing career.

“I wanted to establish myself as an individual capable of standing on my merit, to experience the satisfaction of achievement,” she explained.

She made her professional singing debut with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 1947 and gave her first Carnegie Hall concert two years later. Critics generally praised her poise but were less impressed with her vocal talent.

When Washington Post critic Paul Hume wrote after a 1950 concert that she “is extremely attractive on the stage ... (but) cannot sing very well. She is flat a good deal of the time,” her father fired off a note on White House stationery scolding Hume for a “lousy review.”

“I have never met you, but if I do you’ll need a new nose and plenty of beefsteak and perhaps a supporter below,” the president wrote.

 

The note made Page One news — but was not the sort of publicity an aspiring artist seeks. Years later she was able to laugh about it: “I thought it was funny. Sold tickets.”

She soon turned more to radio and television, where she made regular guest appearances with Jimmy Durante and Milton Berle.

When she met Clifton Daniel at a dinner party in 1955, he was working in New York after a decade as a foreign correspondent. It was not until a month before their wedding in April 1956 that their romance became public.

“We had a lot in common,” he wrote in a 1984 memoir. “We were the kind of people who wouldn’t marry anybody our mothers wouldn’t approve of: a couple of citified small-towners; puritans among the fleshpots.”

 

She and Daniel had four sons; he died in February 2000. Son William died in September 2000 when he was hit by a taxi; he was 41.

She was honorary co-chair of the Harry S. Truman Library Institute, the non-profit partner of her father’s presidential library, and a governing board member of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute. Health issues had prevented her from visiting the library in recent years, but she remained actively interested in its operations, said Michael Devine, director of the library.

 

 

Local LDS members mourn loss of prophet

 

More than 500 members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Santa Ynez and Los Alamos valleys are mourning the loss of their prophet and president, Gordon B. Hinckley, who died on Jan. 27. Hinckley, 97, passed away at his home in Salt Lake City of causes incident to age with his family at his bedside.

Local members of the church will be able to watch a satellite broadcast of the funeral services at 10 a.m. on Feb. 2, at the LDS Chapel, located at 2627 Janin Way.

 

“Hinckley will be remembered by church members for his loving and enlightening spiritual power that he communicated to people everywhere,” said Peter Haws, bishop of the Solvang Ward. “He was an inspirational prophet, seer and revelator who motivated people to become better whether they were interacting with family at home or with their neighbors in the community.”

Hinckley served 12 years as the leader of the church, which has grown to be the second largest church in California and fourth largest in the United States. There are more than 13 million members worldwide.

 

Hinckley was the 15th president of the church and had served as its prophet since March 12, 1995. During the past 12 years, he led the church through a period of unprecedented growth – the church currently reports over 300,000 convert baptisms around the world each year. At the time of his death, he was the oldest president in the church’s 177-year history.

Born June 23, 1910, in Salt Lake City, Hinckley was the son of Bryant Stringham and Ada Bitner Hinckley. Hinckley married Marjorie Pay in the Salt Lake City Temple in 1937, and they had five children and 25 grandchildren. She passed away April 6, 2004.