Kathryn S

Kathryn S: A Faithful Life of Service to Her Church and Family

Kathryn S' 88 years in the church – more than six decades at Trinity Lutheran – have taught her many things. One lesson she wants to share with future generations: Share your time and talents in any way you can.

For her, that lifetime of service has meant everything from serving as a teenage church organist to singing in church choirs to playing hand bells to teaching Sunday School to leading Trinity Lutheran as its council president. Giving back in that way has marked Kathryn’s faith journey, helping her weather her fair share of turbulent times.

“Maybe people don’t feel that way anymore,” she said recently. “I felt like I wanted to be helpful. I wanted to be useful.”

She has, in so many ways.

From Minnesota to Wisconsin

Kathryn’s faith journey began in 1935, when she was born into an Icelandic Lutheran family in Westbrook, Minnesota, a town of 761 people about 160 miles southwest of the Twin Cities. Her father owned a building supply business, and her mother was a teacher.

Even as a youth, Kathryn was active in her church, inspired by her mother.

“It was going to church every single Sunday,” she said. “It was singing in the choir from the time I was probably in junior high. I played our organ one year. I was in Sunday School until I graduated from high school. There was a youth group for girls, Lutheran Daughters of the Reformation, I was part of that.”

Kathryn’s connection with her church continued when she went to nursing school at the University of Minnesota. There she met her future husband, Harold, who was on a basketball scholarship after leading South Milwaukee High School to a state championship in 1952. (Harold also lettered in tennis at Minnesota, on his way to a Hall of Fame tennis coaching career.)

In and after college, Kathryn was an active member of University Lutheran Church of Hope, where she sang in and toured with the choir. She also began building a career in nursing. After getting her bachelor’s in nursing from Minnesota, Kathryn worked for a couple of years at the University of Minnesota Hospital before returning to the university for her master’s degree in nursing and then teaching nursing at Gustavus Adolphus. At the same time, Harold sought his master’s while teaching in Minnesota, returning to work for the South Milwaukee Recreation Department in the summers. Soon, Harold was offered a teaching position in South Milwaukee, and Kathryn eventually joined him.

Kathryn and Harold married in 1962. They joined Trinity that same year.

“There was the synod transfer program, so not only did they give me the information, but they sent a note to the new church itself. So we didn’t have to do this long, exhaustive search,” Kathryn said. “I liked it. I had gone to a big church in Minneapolis for like nine years, so the fact that everybody was a stranger didn't matter to me at all.

“The practices of the church, the liturgy, the sermons, it was all what I was used to. It was very welcoming. The first connection I really got with individuals was in the spring of 1963 … the women of the church had a bridal show, and so I bought a ticket to go. And I think Marcy (then Wilhelm, now Wilhelm-Ergen) was one of the greeters. She’s one of the first people that I met. Another couple I remember were the Kachigans, Martin and Doris. He was a very nice guy, an officer at Ladish. Doris was a greeter at this also, and I remember she asked me my name and she said, ‘Oh, my maiden name is Swanson!’”

Settling in South Milwaukee

Kathryn and Harold settled in South Milwaukee and soon had three children: Kristen, Thor, and Erik. Kathryn stayed active in her church throughout the years while working as a nurse at Trinity Hospital for more than two decades.

She joined the choir in 1975 and remained a member until the pandemic. She joined the bell choir in 1995, taught Sunday School for 23 years, and was chairperson of Vacation Bible School for a short time. Kathryn was secretary, vice president and then president (from 1997 to 1999) of the congregation, and chairperson of the Call Committee to bring Pastor Bill Mains to Trinity in 1997.

“Somebody has to be willing,” she said. “I had that master’s of education, and I had some obligation to the public, to humanity, to use some of that.”

Kathryn would pass on that commitment to service to her children. Kristen, like her mother, became a nurse and pediatric nurse practitioner and is now working on her doctorate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Erik is a pastor in Ohio. Thor was also a pastor and doctor in Iowa, and a medical missionary in Kenya, before tragically passing away from cancer in 2015 – one of a number of challenges that has tested Kathryn on her faith journey.

“That’s just the most painful thing that can happen to anybody, to have something happen to your child,” Kathryn said. “You lean on your faith. I never thought the loss of my faith was going to happen. That is where you get strength from.”

An inspiration for that life of faith -- Kathryn’s mother, Thordis Lindall -- late in life joined her and Harold in South Milwaukee and was an active Trinity member before passing away in 1995.

“She lived with us in this house for 23 years,” Kathryn said. “When she came here, she went to TLCW with me. She was in the Mary Circle, a bible study group. She was a quilter during the 23 years she was here.

“She was very helpful, especially when she was younger. … She was that kind of person, she loved her grandchildren. That was one of the things that drafted my boys into church service, the conversations they had with their grandmother.”

Harold was also an inspiration for many.

After teaching in South Milwaukee, he joined the faculty at The Prairie School in Racine in 1970, coaching boys' and girls' tennis teams and running a busy lesson schedule in the summer. He continued coaching tennis until he was 81 and is a member of the Tennis Coaches Hall of Fame for Wisconsin.

More importantly, he was a role model for his kids.

“Harold had a very strong moral standard and belief. He cared about what was right,” Kathryn said. “There are stories the kids tell of him stopping the car with several kids in it to help someone who was standing with a white cane on the side and was having trouble crossing the street. What a wonderful example for children to grow up with.

“He was so good with young people. He taught in the middle school all those years besides coaching. He was so intuitive about identifying someone who was needful of attention in some way, figuring out how to make life better for somebody. We have hundreds of examples. One I can think of is this girl who came from a tennis playing family, she was left-handed and she was dyslexic, she just couldn’t hit the ball. He spent so many hours … it took year after year of working with this girl and she eventually became a very good tennis player. He just had infinite patience.”

Lessons in Faith

Harold passed away shortly before the pandemic took hold, but his and Kathryn’s legacy lives on through their three children, eight grandchildren and countless lives they have touched through Trinity and in the world.

“My family has been so blessed,” she said. “I am blessed.”

Blessed to lead a true life of faith.

“You don’t have to have a single kind of experience that defines your religious life,” Kathryn said. “You can be in church from the time you’re an infant, every Sunday of your life, because that’s what you want to do. That’s what feels right in your life.”

Kathryn is also thankful to see a next generation of “good people who are younger than I am that I see care about the church. I am grateful there are people like that who are willing to work at keeping it alive.”

And while she is concerned about declining church membership, hastened by the pandemic and borne out in Sunday School attendance – “When I first started teaching Sunday School, there were two complete Sunday Schools, one for each service. It went from 3 and 4 year olds up to high school,” she said – Kathryn has hope for the future.

Her message to the next generation: “They are not always ready to listen, but all of life isn’t going to be easy. They are going to need some faith system to give them strength to meet up with the challenges they are going to be facing.”

“Looking back on the vantage point of life, you know not everything in life is going to be all hunky dory,” Kathryn said. “There are going to be tough moments. If you don’t have your faith that you can fall back on, what do you have?

“I remember talking to Thor about that at one point. His thought was, for young people that had been brought up in the church, they have a foundation, even though they might have dropped away, don’t come to church much anymore, but when worse comes to worse, they do have something they can reach back to. What he felt concerned about was the second generation – the children of those people. What do they have to help them through the tough times?”

She hopes they have the church she helped build.

“You have to have more than just a belief,” she said. “You have to have a place to practice your faith.”