Fiercely proud of her heritage, Kirsten’s favorite saying was “I was born Danish, I live Danish, and I’ll die Danish.” However, her life encompassed many countries and cultures that each had an influence on her. A natural extrovert, Kirsten loved to interact with people, enabling her to make friends and feel at home all over the world.
Danish Beginnings
Born in 1942 in Copenhagen during the Nazi occupation of Denmark, Kirsten’s early years were characterized by the economic hardships of post-war Europe. While her father Gunnar Lemvigh worked to build a career as an actor in the Danish Theater, her mother Inger instilled in her a frugality and tenacity that would serve her well throughout her life.
Kirsten’s innate aptitude for languages enabled her to master English, German, and French while in the Danish Gymnasium or high school. After her white hat (a symbol of graduation from Gymnasium), Kirsten then lived in Paris for a year to further perfect her French at the Sorbonne. She also began to meet people of different nationalities, explore new cultures, and develop her own cosmopolitan flair.
After graduating from the Sorbonne, 20-year-old Kirsten returned to Denmark and enrolled in a business school to become a multi-lingual secretary. She never finished the program because of a chance meeting with a Swedish travel arranger, who offered her a job in Egypt. She jumped at the chance for an adventure in a new country, and three days later she was on a plane to Cairo as an assistant tour guide. Naturally quick on her feet, Kirsten honed her bargaining skills while negotiating with camel drivers, shop keepers, hotel owners, bus company executives, and others to get the services her tour groups required.
Next, Kirsten was assigned by her tour company to Cyprus. The company also occasionally had her lead groups on a tour called “In the Footsteps of Jesus” through Israel and Jordan, even though she knew little of those countries and only had Sunday school knowledge of Jesus. Undaunted, she navigated these new lands successfully, although during one of these tours she and her group had to be evacuated out of Damascus by the UN due to erupting conflicts.
Political tensions in Cyprus caused Kirsten to relocate to Athens, Greece. While there, she meet Gerald Elliot, an American soldier whom she married and moved with to Fort Sheridan, Illinois. As an Army wife living on base, she once again quickly adapted to her new surroundings. She worked as a waitress until giving birth to her first daughter Kathrine in 1965. Soon after, her marriage ended in divorce and she returned to Denmark with her daughter.
Kirsten worked to re-establish herself in the travel industry while balancing single motherhood. This fortunately included a six-month stay in Sicily with an Italian family that helped her to acquire her seventh language. She then landed a position at Spies Travel, which grew into one of Scandinavia’s largest charter travel companies. Thus at the beginning of 1973,
Kirsten was an experienced travel industry professional with proficiency in multiple languages, honed negotiating and people skills, and a great job with one of the best travel companies in Denmark. Little did she know a whole new chapter of her life was about to begin when she met American Tom Ransom on Midsummer’s Eve of that year aboard a Greek cruise ship docked in Copenhagen harbor. After a one year courtship, Kirsten married Tom in the historic Frederiksberg Round Church on September 7th 1974. They honeymooned in Rome and Sorento in Italy and invited Tom’s parents along. As they were the only members of Tom’s family to make the long trip from Iowa to Copenhagen for the wedding, Kirsten said there was no way she was going to just leave them behind on their own in Denmark.
The Expatriate Years
As an expatriate working for Bank of America in Copenhagen, Tom proved a perfect match for Kirsten in that he, too, wanted to experience the cultures of different countries. Together they traveled every chance they got around Europe, usually to Spies Travel destinations taking advantage of Kirsten’s inside connections. In 1975 the family had home leave in America and Kirsten met many of Tom’s family in Iowa for the first time.
In February 1977, their daughter Viveka arrived two months premature so she had to stay a couple of months in the hospital before coming home. In July, Bank of America offered Tom a post in Karachi, Pakistan. So after almost 5 years in Denmark, the family was off on a new adventure in November of that year.
Kirsten found herself the “mem-saab” or mistress of a large villa staffed with several servants, one of whom was Sheila Human, a young woman from Sri Lanka. Working as a nanny, Sheila was instantly attached to Viveka and became part of the family with her husband Cyril. They later had a daughter whom they named Viveka after Kirsten’s child. For the rest of her life, Kirsten kept in touch with them and visited occasionally. In 2013, she and Tom even attended the wedding of Sheila and Cyril’s Viveka in London.
In 1979, Kirsten and her family were evacuated from Pakistan due to riots that resulted in the partial burning of the American embassy in Islamabad. After a sojourn in London, Tom was offered a new position in Cairo, Egypt with Bank of America in 1980. Given Kirsten’s prior experience in Egypt including her Arabic language skills, she was confident she could handle another adventurous post so off the family went to Africa.
Kirsten immediately began introducing herself to the local expatriate community via the American school and the American embassy, which she had also done in Pakistan to build a support network. She also discovered that the American Church had a significant presence, including a very active women’s group that would become a significant source of support. Among her most memorable experiences with this group was organizing Thanksgiving dinners for 2 years for over 100 people. Also, she relished decorating the church for Christmas, complete with live candles and white poinsettias reminiscent of Scandinavian traditions. She even arranged to have a real tree shipped from Denmark with the help of some friends with SAS airlines. One year, it was delivered to the Catholic Church instead of the American Church, so she marched over and disabused Father Damian of his Christmas miracle.
In 1989, Bank of America transferred Tom to Athens, Greece. Again Kirsten would be returning to a country and a language she knew. And while she and Tom embraced the Greek culture whole-heartedly, they also found an international community of expatriates that would yield enduring friendships. Key to their lives was the congregation of the American community church, made up of people from all over the world. Kirsten found fellow Danes at the Scandinavian Seamen’s Church, enabling her to enjoy a stronger link to her roots than she had in Pakistan or Egypt. The family still traveled each year to Denmark to visit Kirsten’s family, and to Iowa to visit Tom’s family as well as Kathrine, who had settled in the United States after graduating from the University of Tampa in Florida.
In early 1994 while visiting Denmark, Kirsten’s family and friends persuaded her to enter a rehab facility there because her drinking had gotten out of control. After a rough beginning to her recovery process, June 6, 1994 was her first day of sobriety. She became very active with AA groups wherever she lived or traveled, earning her 21 year coin last June. Kirsten even volunteered to arrange an AA convention in Greece in 1996. She found the Club Ermioni resort in the Peloponnesus region, which both she and Tom fell in love with and returned to year after year, including the summer of 2015 while she was in remission from pancreatic cancer.
Also in 1994, Kathrine married Mark Buchanan in Arizona and soon had two sons Thomas and Jack. Kirsten began to plan for a retirement that would enable her to be nearer to them. In 1999, the same year Viveka graduated from Iowa State University, Kirsten bought a house in Chandler, Arizona. Tom retired from Bank of America Greece in March 2002, completing 30 years overseas while beginning a new adventure in the United States.
The Golden Years
In retirement, Kirsten focused on her Arizona family and the first home she had ever owned. She also joined a local AA group and a very active Danish women’s group. In 2001, Viveka married Joshua Neveln and later gave Kirsten two more grandsons, Seth and Nathan. Kirsten and Tom traveled frequently to visit them in Alexandria, Virginia. They also began traveling further afield to fill in the places they had not yet been to and to maintain connections with old friends living overseas.
Highlights of these travels include six trips to Tahiti and cruises around French Polynesia, because Kirsten adored the exotic beauty of this region while enjoying the French connection. They also cruised the Caribbean, the Baltic including St. Petersburg, and from New Zealand to Singapore by way of Australia and Indonesia. Other notable trips were three weeks in Japan and several jaunts to the Hawaiian Islands. Arranging all these tours and getting the best deals became Kirsten’s passion as she came full circle back to her travel business roots in her retirement.
In addition, Kirsten and Tom continued to make annual trips to Denmark. During one of these visits, she discovered cousins living in New Zealand who she had not previously known about. In 2013, Kirsten planned a visit to them that included a cruise that left from Auckland, where the cousins live. In early 2015 Kirsten and Tom again visited the cousins for two weeks at the end of another cruise. Thus at the end of her life, Kirsten found great joy in expanding her circle of Danish family and friends, even in far flung corners of the globe.
Final Adventure
In December of 2013, Kirsten developed jaundice due to a mass blocking her bile duct. Scans and a biopsy done between Christmas and New Year’s confirmed it was pancreatic cancer. In 2014, following two months of chemotherapy and radiation that shrank the tumor, Kirsten was determined to undergo surgery despite having lost a lot of weight and feeling very weak. On April 23, a seven hour procedure successfully removed the tumor but it took a couple of months to regain her strength.
Just before leaving the rehabilitation facility, she fell and broke her right femur. After another operation to repair it, she spent most of July back at the facility. By mid-August she was home and walking unaided again after nearly eight months of intense medical treatments. Given the go-ahead from her doctor to “go out and enjoy life,” Kirsten spent her final year visiting all the places and friends most dear to her, including Denmark, Greece, Iowa, Tahiti and New Zealand. She even squeezed in a Caribbean cruise during which she finally reached South America.
In August 2015, a scan revealed the cancer had returned and metastasized. She immediately began chemo but to no avail. Finally, early on October 31, Kirsten breathed her last in her bed at home.
COMPARTA UN OBITUARIO
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