Des Moines Lodge #102 Honors a Longtime Member, Kirsten Lundgren According to Kirsten, she is the most senior member of Danish Brotherhood Lodge #15, also the first female member and the first female President. Kirsten is also a longtime member of Sisterhood Lodge #102. She was born in a Copenhagen apartment with a midwife assisting her mother on September 13, 1932. She likes to say she was born and raised on the sidewalks of Copenhagen. There was no lawn to play upon, only sidewalks and a courtyard. They always lived in an apartment, never a house. She remembers clothes hanging on the line, roller skating and wonderful trips to the beautiful parks of Copenhagen. Two and a half years after her birth, her brother was born. She states she had a pleasant childhood. She had a 'stay at home mother'. She started attending an all-girl school at age 7. Schools were divided by sex, one for girls and a different one for boys. Kirsten's grandmother and father were Ger man. She had many German cousins. When Germany occupied Denmark during WW II they used the schools as their headquarters. The displaced students used the churches for schoolrooms. Kirsten was eight years old at the time. The Germans confiscated what food they wanted, so the Danes had no meat or fruit. Horse meat became the staple. A tragic accident on March 21, 1945 caused the deaths of 100 students and teachers when a French Catholic School was accidentally bombed. A nearby house full of Danish prisoners was also bombed, allowing many prisoners to escape. The survivors of the bombing were told to get up, walk home and never look back. The houses were flaming all around. The scared children hid in their bedrooms. When the war was over on May 5, there was a party all night long. They got to have bananas again. An aunt who had married a Jew and escaped to Sweden came home. She brought margarine. The World's Friendship Association was started. The Exchange Student program began. Kirsten spent 3 weeks in England. They had a student from Holland live with them for a while. Danish students started learning English in 5th grade. Kirsten worked for a bank in Copenhagen and always received yearly passes to Tivoli Gardens.
On one of the Tivoli trips she bought cigarettes and met an American soldier. They went to have ice cream and had a nice visit. The next day he came to the bank to see Kirsten and also met her parents. He went back to the war. He had a Danish heritage and came back to visit. He proposed marriage and a Visa was arranged for Kirsten to go to America in 1952. They traveled on the Royal Viking to America. She arrived in America on November 24, 1953 and they were soon married. In those days, everybody wanted to come to America. It was a great surprise to live on East Broadway in Des Moines. She had expected something like the streets of Broadway in New York. Instead she saw cornfields and gravel roads. Her father wrote and asked if she wanted to come home. She wrote, no. Her brother came in the summer of 1955. Then her parents came. Her father had been a tailor in Denmark and continued working in Des Moines. He worked for Gov. Robert Ray. Some of the jobs Kirsten held include: Inventory clerk at an auto parts store, title work at Cars Incorporated. She later took classes at Grand View and Iowa State. She eventually taught third grade in Saylorville. In 1961 she joined the Danish sisterhood. After a foreign food festival in downtown Des Moines, she joined the Brotherhood, which was a small group of only men at the time. Many of her Danish 'things' were destroyed in moves. One of the special Christmas traditions was always having an Advent Wreath where a candle was lit each week before Christmas. Another tradi tion involved her parents secretly setting up a 'tree' in a separate room on Christmas Eve. After supper they were allowed to light the candles on the tree and then see the decorations of baskets of fruits and goodies that they were now allowed to eat. The piano was played and carols were sung, and they danced around the 'tree'. 'Santa', played by her Grandfather, rang the doorbell, and then joined in celebrating. The tree stayed up until Epiphany. Another tradition was the special almond to be found in the Christmas pudding. Submitted by Claudia Holcomb
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Danish Sisterhood News, May 2022
