Naomi K. (Koltvet) Austin

Naomi (Koltvet) Austin, 98, of Oak Park Heights, Minnesota and formerly of Clarion, passed away Thursday, November 1, 2018 at Boutwells Landing in Oak Park Heights.

Funeral services for Naomi Austin will be held on Saturday, November 10, 2018 at 1:00 PM at Holmes Lutheran Church, 2139 Hancock Avenue in rural Holmes, with Pastors Rich Taylor and Steve Lund officiating. Burial will take place at the Holmes Lutheran Cemetery.

“Come and join me on the swing on our porch along the front of our large white house facing east. Bring along your cold drink and get comfortable while I tell you about my memories of being the ninth child born to Nels and Bertha Koltvet, my parents.”

That is the lead sentence in Mom’s maybe dozen page memoire, written years ago as part of a big project bringing together memories of all of the Koltvet brothers and sisters. It’s a great lead in to a very well written paper – just one of the many pleasant surprises Mom has sprung on us over the years. Our job here is to see if we can write as well as she.

Naomi was born on September 22, 1920. Just imagine – we were flying then, but barely. We had some WWI aces and the idea of commercial aviation was starting to take shape. By the time she was 49 Neil Armstrong had landed on the moon. The changes to our country and our world that she and others of her age saw are almost unimaginable.

She grew up as the eighth of the ten Koltvet siblings (an eleventh died in infancy). One of seven sisters, she also had three brothers. Tom and I grew up with fabulous aunts and uncles and a raft of cousins with whom we are very close to this day.

All of those Koltvets lived on a farm outside of Clarion, in north central Iowa. She worked very hard as a young girl, doing everything from feeding hogs to milking cows to churning butter to cooking and cleaning up in their very hot (in the summer) kitchen.

After graduating from Clarion High School in 1939, Mom attended Waldorf College in Forest City for a year, studying business and secretarial skills. She sang in the Waldorf choir which travelled to Chicago for one of their concerts that year. It was a great adventure and certainly a first for her.

After Waldorf, she worked for a bank in Williams for several years. When her mother fell ill she was asked to return to Clarion in order to help the family. A few months later, Naomi was recruited and hired by a new bank in town. It was 1947. It was there that she met Charles Austin, and within a year they were married.

Their first years together were spent living in Clarion, and raising two very young sons. In 1956 their brother in law Charles Hill – dean at Rochester Junior College – informed dad that IBM was coming to town and was hiring. Dad went to work for IBM, and he and mom spent the rest of their lives in Rochester.

Naomi was a stay at home mom until Tom and I were adolescents, whereupon she fired up her secretarial skills again and went to work for an architectural firm. That kept her busy for a couple of years until she also was hired by IBM. Our two parents retired from what they called the ‘blue zoo’ in the mid-eighties.

Naomi was always a very kind, loving and gentle person. We could not have asked for a better mom. Her faith and her family always came first for her. She was always very active in her church and was always very interested in her family and friends. She and dad were very generous with their Rochester home, frequently offering accommodations to family and friends who were at the Mayo Clinic for various treatments.

She, like her many sisters, was known for her baking. There was never a shortage of beautiful treats around her house. Anything from Kringla with our morning coffee to various favorite pies and cakes for special (and maybe not so special) occasions, they were all just great. Once in a while she would greet us at her door with the word that she had made a new recipe for dessert – we would always say we didn’t want new recipes from her – we just needed our old favorites.

Mom led a long and very productive life – she had a great positive influence on the many people she met – both family and friends. Her last few years, with challenges from a stroke and dementia led to a dramatically diminished quality of life. She is in a much better place now.

Naomi was preceded in death by her husband Charles and all of her brothers and sisters. She is survived by two sons, James (Coleen) and Thomas (Nancy), four grandsons, Charles, John, Eric and Alexander (Nicole), as well as many nieces and nephews, great nieces and nephews and more. She will be missed.

May she rest in peace.

In lieu of flowers, the family invites donations to Wycliffe Bible Translators, for the support of our missionary / linguist cousin, Jeanne Austin, or to the charity of your choice.  Jeanne’s ID number with Wycliffe is 10359.