Anna Marie Jondahl Haakonsen

   Another name for Anna was Anne Marie Jondahl Haakonsen.

  Noted events in her life were:

• Place: Christened at St. Petri Church, Oct 6, 1918, Stavanger, Norway.

• Graduation: Punchard High School, Jun 1936, Andover, MA.

• School: Tufts University where she was a Physics major with a minor in Mathematics, Sep 1936-Nov 1939, Medford, MA. She was also a member of Chi Omega Fraternity and worked her first summer as waitress in a resort hotel in mountains of NH, second summer as typist in Boston, MA, and third summer in MIT Alumni Office doing clerical work and typing for Technology Review editor.

• Graduation: the University of Akron with a BS in Physics, Jun 1944, Akron, OH. Attended evening classes and taught in Physics Laboratory while completing degree work from Sep 1941-Jun 1944.

• School: the UC Berkeley and received a certificate in "Principles of Production Tooling", Sep 1960, Berkeley, CA.

• School: Oakland Adult High School and took Beginning and Advanced Bookkeeping courses, Nov 1970-Jan 1971, Oakland, CA. Each normally a one-year course.

• School: Golden Gate College in their Masters Degree in Accounting program, 1972, San Francisco, CA. Completed all course work except Income Tax courses, then left after deciding she was not interested in getting CPA credential. Worked as bookkeeper for insurance brokerage while in school.

• Occupation: in various capacities, 1939/1994.
December 1939 to September 1943, Housewife in Akron, OH.
September 1943 to June 1944, Instructor in Physics Department at the University of Akron.
June 1944 to Summer 1948, Housewife in Sharon Center, OH.
Summer 1948 to Summer 1959, Housewife in Piedmont, CA.
Summer 1959 to Summer 1961, Started work as a Tool Engineer at Marchant Calculator Co. in Emeryville, CA. Continued there until the company was bought by Smith-Corona and moved to the South-eastern states in 1961.
Summer 1961 to November 1964, Housewife in Piedmont, CA.
November 1964 to April 1967, Sales Secretary at Precision Founders in San Leandro, CA. Left because of unexpected long recovery from complete mastectomy and because further surgery would be necessary in 6 months or so.
April 1967 to August 1968, Olsten's Temporary Service (while recovering from surgery March 1967 and February 1968, whenever able to work).
September 1968 to November 1968, Temporary office secretary at Richmond Yacht Club.
November 1968 to March 1970, Housewife in Piedmont. Earl was Commodore of our yacht club and requested that I be available for his personal secretarial work.
March 1970 to September 1970, Clerical work at the Yacht Racing Association of San Francisco Bay office in San Francisco.
September 1970 to November 1970, Temporary office work through "Selective Office Services."
November 1970 to June 1971, Housewife (Final surgery in Spring 1971).
June 1971 to September 1972, Administrative Assistant to R. G. Hurlbert, Controller at Hydraulic Controls, Inc. in Emeryville.
September 1, 1972 to September 15, 1973, Bookkeeper at Orinco, Inc., an insurance brokerage company in San Francisco.
September 15, 1973 to October 10, 1975, Bookkeeper for Congeneric, Inc. and all its subsidiaries, Main office in Oakland.
October 1975 to Spring 1983, Housewife in Piedmont, CA.
Spring 1983 to Spring 1994, Housewife in Elmira, OR.

• Hobbies: sewing, crafts, photography, camping, sailing, and other activities.
Learned about "Basic" patterns and designing clothes in Sharon Center, Ohio, also how to make a dress form from glued paper strips. Had a vegetable garden and purchased fruit for canning and freezing. We designed a one-wheel camping trailer for the trip to California. Earl flew to San Francisco, but since the house sale didn't go through at the last minute Anne stayed in Ohio until that was settled and then drove across the country. Her father (Hans Haakonsen) came along so she wouldn't be alone with the four small children while camping out.

In California Anne became active with the Chi Omega Alumnae group and later with the Piedmont Arts and Crafts Guild where she tried her hand at painting and other crafts, including silk screen printing. Anne and Earl made Christmas cards several years. Anne was a Camp Fire Girl Leader when the girls were involved in these activities.

On one of his visits Anne's father made her an enlarger from an old camera and we set up a darkroom under the stairs, then Anne did a lot of photographic work and started the family picture albums. Anne's father married Karin Melander in the fall of 1953 just before he died of cancer. Karin went to Santa Barbara to live just as she and Hans had planned and set up a weaving studio. Anne visited there and was introduced to weaving when Karin asked for help in translating a book entitled "Weaving Patterns by a Swedish weaver named Malin Selander. A year or so later, Anne visited Karin with all five children and painted the sign telling about her weaving studio. Karin set up a loom and had Anne weave a beautiful white boucle wool shawl.

When the children were all small we went camping up in the general area of Yosemite, but as they got bigger we needed two cars to be really comfortable, so we did more traveling and camping.

In the summer of 1956 we took two cars and drove north along the coast highway to Oregon. Each child had special chores when we set up camp. It was a lot of fun. Also in 1956 we got interested in sailboats and finally bought an unfinished hull, and the spars, etc from Dick Jackson. It was a Blue Jay Class, centerboard boat and Dick felt that if we spent the winter finishing the boat and coming to Blue Jay Class meetings we would be better prepared the following spring to go sailing. We read a lot of Callahan's sailing books and worked hard on finishing the boat. When we finally got it into the water we found that we really needed two boats, so we ordered another one for Anne and then Earl built two El Toro's, one for Jean and one for Robert and Bruce. We all went to S.B.R.A. (Small Boat Racing Association) regattas and had a lot of fun. In the summers of 1957 and 1958 we spent time at Clear Lake, camping with the Blue Jay to sail in -- sometimes I stayed longer with the children and Earl went back to work.

Finally in 1959 we bought a 23 foot keel boat of the Bear Class, named GRIZZLEY-BEAR and started to sail on San Francisco Bay. That is when we learned about "currents". Earl could not stand up down below in the Bear Boat and it really was too small for the whole family to live on "up-river", so in February of 1962 we ordered a 28.5 foot fiberglass sloop of the Triton class to be built for us. (at the boat show) Soon after that 42 Greenbank (a house just exactly what I wanted to live in) came on the market and we arranged to buy it and then as soon as these plans were made, Ann Marie and Mike told us their plans for getting married. It was a very busy summer, getting the house ready for a wedding reception and learning how to handle a much larger boat. From then on Sailing was the important recreation. We raced most weekends and went "up-river" in the summertime. Anne and the children would spend several weeks there with Earl coming up on weekends to visit.

In the early Seventies, we bought 40 acres of woodland in Tenmile, Oregon with the idea that Ruth and Brian would live there and Earl and I would retire there. When Ruth and Brian moved to the state of Washington which had different regulations about goat dairies, Anne spent a busy summer getting the house fixed up to rent. Taking care of the property and dealing with the tenants took a lot of time and energy. Anne stopped working so she would have the time to deal with this and also to get caught up on other projects like learning to weave. In 1976 Anne took a weaving class from Astrid, a Swedish weaving teacher, and in 1977, Earl built a 45 inch counterbalance loom following the instructions in "Building the Oregon Loom" by David Mathieson. This set of plans was most unusual in that it called for lumberyard dimensioned wood. This is a very very nice loom. Anne wove a "Rag Rya" rug late in 1978 and won a blue ribbon on it at the 1979 Northern California Weaving Conference.

In 1977, Anne visited Jean in Florida and was taken on a nice canoe trip and a camping trip to the Everglades and down to Key West, then in 1978 Anne took a trip to Norway to visit Tante Mimi (Kleiberg) in Stavanger and Anne-Betten in Bergen and all the other cousins.

In 1983 the house in Piedmont was sold and Anne and Earl moved to the 100 year old farmhouse in Elmira, Oregon that had been purchased a couple of years earlier. Bruce and his family had spent the winter in the house getting a big part of the remodeling done with. Then Ann Marie invited Anne to come along on a trip to Hawaii where she was going for a nursing conference and then on to Australia. We visited with Lorna Benson, that Anne's cousin Anne-Betten Njaa had been corresponding with. Lorna and her husband Peter live in Melbourne, Australia. We also had a trip to New Zealand. In 1987, Anne went with Ruth on a Geology class trip to the Grand Canyon in Arizona and walked down to the Phantom Ranch at the bottom of the canyon and back up the next day.

In 1991 one of Anne's weaving friends gave her an old Radio Shack Computer that her husband had had. Anne used it til later in the summer when a part went out and since it was not easy to service it, she bought an IBM clone so that she would have something that was more like what everybody else had. Now she spends hours and hours at the computer doing things like the genealogy program, and financial accounting and keeping an inventory of the freezers and really mostly learning more about how to use the computer. It's just real nice for letters.

In October 1995 Anne and Earl moved to Junction City to a small house they had purchased, then Anne had emergency surgery -- Heart By-Pass. This slowed down the "settling in" at the new residence.

Miscellaneous:-- Anne has knitted socks, sweaters and afgahns, crocheted afgahns, coarse lace and one blouse, tatted Christmas tree ornaments and doilies. She has done several different kinds of embroidery including Hardanger. She has tanned goat skins, a pony skin, an elk hide and deer hides. She plays the piano very very poorly, only by reading the music and she likes to figure out how to do things.

Anne, 3 March 1994

• Travel: to Norway to visit relatives, 1978, Stavanger, Norway. Visited Tante Mimi (Kleiberg) in Stavanger and Anne-Betten in Bergen and all the other cousins.

• Health: was complicated by mastectomy surgery and subsequent restorative operations, 3/1967-Spring 1971.

• Health: effected by emergency cardiac bypass surgery, Oct 1995, Junction City, OR.

Anna married Earl Edwin Larson, son of Oscar Edwin Larson and Elly Sophie Ålander, on Dec 20, 1939 in Medford, MA. (Earl Edwin Larson was born on Jun 12, 1917 in Columbus, OH, christened on May 18, 1918 and died on Dec 29, 2000 in Junction City, OR.)