Jessie Anna Mikkelsen

Jessie Anna Andersen was born July 8, 1917, in Detroit, Michigan to emigrant parents Walter and Gunny Andersen. She lost her mother at age 6 (after childbirth with her sister Katherine who we came to know as Aunt Kay). Jessie and her brother Henry (Uncle Hank) lived with her mother’s Swedish relatives in Minnesota for a year while her father Andy got back on his feet. The young family lived through the Great Depression and eventually moved to Des Moines, Iowa, where Jessie spent her high school years.

Jessie was active in school, playing catcher on the softball team and performing in school plays. A classmate at her 50th reunion remembered her as a leading lady. She put herself through college over a 10-year period, working as a secretary for a couple of years at a time to save enough for a year of tuition. During that time she worked for the Grange, which organized co-operatives, traveling from Michigan to the Deep South to give speeches. She told of getting in trouble once for giving 2 black ladies a ride. She was a life-long liberal.

Jessie graduated from college in Gunnison, Colorado, in 1946 and moved to California for her first teaching jobs. As a business teacher at Hemet High School she told us of timing her typing class to cowboy music to keep the boys interested. She attended reunions of the classes of 1948 and 1949; her former students always had fond memories of Miss Andersen.

Jessie spent a summer on a bicycle/hostel tour of Scandinavia in the late 1940’s. She looked up relatives in Denmark and Sweden. Her father’s sister, Aunt Agnes, proceeded to send her letters in Danish which she could not understand. Jessie was introduced to Henning Dahl (Mik) Mikkelsen by Carl and Ruth Peters at the Ramona Pageant in the spring of 1949. He had recently come to America from Denmark and was being shown around by artist friends from Laguna Beach – Pauli & Boris Buzan and Preben & Osa Norgaard. Mik was the creator of the comic strip Ferd’nand. When she realized he was Danish she asked him to translate those letters. She then roped him into helping her set up for school events during the summer. On October 2, 1949, they eloped to Las Vegas.

Mik and Jessie’s first daughter, Betty Ann, was born in July 1950. Mik bought property in the hills above Hemet, near the Peters and Norgaards. As the family grew so did the house. First the log cabin, then the small adobe, followed by another bedroom, the screen porch, a garage, a separate living room with another bedroom and bathroom and finally the pool. Mary Lou was born in February 1952, Sally Jean in March 1955, and Eric Dahl in August 1960.

Family was everything to Jessie. Fortunately for us she wrote prolific Christmas letters describing those early days in detail. Jessie’s sister Kay moved to California with Uncle Louie and cousins Cecil, Anna and David Lee soon after Jessie did. There was a constant stream of visitors to Mikkelsen Mountain – relatives, artist friends, even young Danish men who worked six month stints at Howard Rose Company. Mik and Jessie hosted 16-year old Danish nieces Jette & Ebba for a year, Mik’s daughter Jane and Aunt Thea each came from Denmark for months at a time. Cousins Cecil and Anna Lewellen spent weeks during the summer as children (the whole family was there for most holidays). When Mik’s niece Jette immigrated to America and married Bill Duncan they, with daughters Christine and Michele, became part of the extended family. Jessie loved to host gatherings with the Lewellens, Buzans, Norgaards and Duncans. As the letters evolved in the sixties, they became more about children’s activities with Mom as chauffer, chief cook and bottle washer, Girl Scout troop leader, PTA president, bookkeeper and costume maker for the dance studio, etc. In 1968 they hosted a foreign exchange student, Opas from Thailand, and in later years Jessie took in a Japanese exchange student, Shoko.

The Mikkelsen family liked to travel. In 1959 Jessie convinced Mik to make a trip back to Denmark. It became a 5-month drive around nine European countries in a station wagon with 3 young girls, with ocean voyages and drives across country on either end. After that they became seasoned travelers, taking the family to Denmark again in 1966 and 1968. They attended Sally’s wedding to Asim Gunalp in Turkey in 1979. Jessie’s father lived with them for his final 3 years. She often said how wonderful it was for her to have had the opportunity to take him back to Denmark. After Mik passed, in 1982, Jessie returned to Turkey several times with Sally & Asim, toured Yugoslavia with Pauli Buzan (they also did an Alaska cruise) and traveled to Hawaii and Japan. She even took granddaughter Cindy to Denmark at age 13. Jessie’s last trip to Denmark and Sweden was with her cousin Carl Edeburn.

Travel was so important to Jessie. There were family vacations every year, around Southern California or to national parks in the southwest. There were whole summer vacations in Laguna Beach and weeks in Encinitas. She even got Mik to a family reunion in Minnesota once. In later years she discovered Elderhostel, which led to an interest in genealogy and annual trips to the library in Salt Lake City. She made friends in many countries and languages and was welcomed wherever she went.

Jessie did go back to teaching in the 70s, first at the high school, then a teen mother program and finally computers at adult night school and the junior college. Jessie and Mik built a new house further up the hill, next to Simpson Park, in 1973. When Mik passed away, Eric moved back home until his wedding to Terri in 1986. Jessie played tennis into her 70s.

Jessie was generous. She was there to help when each of her 8 grandchildren were born – Matthew Mikkelsen-Pope in Albuquerque NM, Cindy and Stephanie Miller in Raleigh NC, Tijen, Jemilay and Peri Gunalp in San Diego, Riley and Keely Mikkelsen in Hemet. She made it to every graduation and wedding and held each of her five great grandchildren days after their birth.

When her eyesight began failing Jessie moved to Del Mar where Sally could help her get to exercise and discussion classes at the Braille and senior centers. She lived with Betty in Rancho Cucamonga in 2009 and 2010, moving into an assisted care facility in Hemet in 2011. After a bout with pneumonia in late December, she spent her final months at 3 Sisters Hacienda in Escondido where she passed away with all four of her children beside her on May 16, 2013.

Jessie was active into her 80’s, loved to travel, devoted to her family, a life-long teacher and a great role model as a courageous, independent woman.

Graveside service will be held on Wednesday, May 22, 2013 at San Jacinto Valley Cemetery at 10:30 A.M.

Entrusted to the care of McWane Family Funeral Home.