Bernice Adeline Hermanson Crawford

Bernice Adeline Johnson Hermanson Crawford, died Friday, May 13, 2022, in a vehicle collision east of Baltic. Memorial service is Sunday, July 3, 2 p.m., at Abiding Savior Free Lutheran Church, 4100 S. Bahnson Ave., Sioux Falls, with no visitation prior. Interment is at Norway Cemetery, Garretson. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to Arise Ukraine at https://www.ariseukr.com.

Survivors include children, Duane (Trish) Hermanson, Lakewood, CO, Robin Hermanson, Garretson, SD, son-in-law Don Wipf, Whidbey Island, WA; stepchildren Jerry (Sharon) Crawford, Phoenix, AZ; Judith (Dean) Lehman, St. George, UT; and Janice (Richard) Sutherlin, Toledo, WA; 17 grandchildren and 24 great-grandchildren.

She is preceded in death by her parents and siblings; first husband Eric Hermanson, Sioux Falls, SD; second husband Orville Crawford, Enumclaw, WA; daughter Peggy Wipf, Seattle, WA; daughter-in-law Carol Hermanson, Garretson, SD; son-in-law Bohlen Thye, Roland, IA; granddaughter Elizabeth Abathan, Roland, IA; and great-granddaughter Lydia Williamson, Denver, CO. Daughter Joy Thye, Roland IA, died shortly after Bernice from the same collision.

Bernice Adeline Hermanson Crawford stitched together the days of her life with threads of kindness. She first learned to serve others as the youngest of eight children of John and Luella Ellefson Johnson, who farmed near Trent, South Dakota. She gathered chicken eggs and hauled well water in five-gallon pails. Using a wood and cob fire to heat the oven, she worked with her mother to bake bread, and she drove the tractor during harvest. Years later Bernice wrote that during the Depression and the scarlet fever epidemic, “I thought the world was going to end in a fire. I’d say the Lord’s prayer over and over.”

After attending Eastern Normal Teacher’s College in Madison for a year, Bernice received a teaching certificate. Then she taught in one-room country schools for four years, riding her bike on the dirt roads when weather permitted. She recalled directing school programs with a stage built on planks across saw horses and a curtain constructed with a sheet hung from safety pins attached to a wire.

One day at church she spotted a handsome, lanky visitor. Eric Hermanson noticed the attractive blonde, too. Several weeks later they spotted each other at a dance. Eric asked her to waltz and learned she was teaching not far from his family’s farm.

After that, the couple sledded together and danced to Lawrence Welk’s orchestra. When Eric asked her to marry, Bernice decided she would “go against a vow I had made earlier in life - that I would never marry a farmer. I didn’t want to live without electricity and indoor plumbing.” She was relieved to learn that the Hermanson farm had modern plumbing. “Most of all, we got along well and were able to work out our quarrels,” Bernice said.

They were married on June 8, 1945. In the drafty Hermanson farmhouse near Garretson that was plastered with horsehair and lime, Bernice and Eric raised Duane, Robin, Joy, and Peggy. Eventually they tore down the old two-story house and built a ranch-style home that Bernice designed.

“My days revolved around meals,” Bernice recalled. She served breakfast, morning lunch, dinner, afternoon lunch, supper, and bedtime dessert to her family and occasionally farm hands.  She washed laundry with home-made lye soap, then ran it through a wringer and hung it outdoors even in the snowy winter where they froze stiff before she hauled it in to iron. In the evening after reading a devotional to the children and tucking them in, she painted china, crocheted, and decorated items with Norwegian rosemaling painting.

Bernice’s kindness extended outside her busy home. She and Eric sponsored a 4-H club and Zion Lutheran Church’s youth program. They supported their children’s college Christian activities. She taught extension classes and assisted an agency that installed a water system in their rural community.  After she and Eric moved to Sioux Falls, she threatened to retire her sewing machine. But even as her fingers curled with arthritis, her machine kept humming as she sewed clothes for her extended family. Bernice’s vibrant Christian faith expressed itself in Bible studies and prayer fellowships.

After Eric passed on December 3, 2005, Bernice received a surprise phone call from a college classmate she had not seen for sixty-five years. Their calls and correspondence blossomed into romance, and she and Orville Crawford, a widower in Enumclaw, Washington, were married on December 29, 2006. Orville passed on March 23, 2010. Now in Heaven, too, Bernice is experiencing fully what she often said: “God is good and worth following.” She has been rewarded for all the kindness that she stitched together throughout her life.