Daryl Jeanne Narveson

Daryl Jeanne Narveson, age 90 of Grinnell, died on Thursday morning, Oct. 11, 2018 at Mercy Medical Center in Des Moines.

A funeral service will be held at 10:30 a.m. on Sunday, Oct. 14 at the Smith Funeral Home in Grinnell. Visitation will be held prior to her service from 9:30 a.m. until 10:30 a.m. Burial will be held at 11:30 a.m. on Monday, Oct. 15, at Sunnyside Memory Gardens south of Charles City. The Rev. David Tryggestad, son-in-law, will officiate at both services.

In lieu of flowers, the family prefers memorials to the Grinnell High School Fine Arts Alliance, the Drake Community Library in Grinnell, or the St. Francis Manor Foundation, mailed in care of the Smith Funeral Home, PO Box 368, Grinnell, Iowa 50112. Memories and condolences may be shared with the family online at www.smithfh.com.

Daryl Jeanne Narveson was born in Forest City, Iowa, on Aug. 5, 1928, the second of three children of Ruth and Harmon Lundberg. She graduated from Forest City High School in 1946 and attended Waldorf College for one year until leaving school to care for her mother. During Daryl’s time at Waldorf, John Roger Narveson returned stateside after service with the Army Corps of Engineer’s Civilian Construction Corps in Hawaii to also attend Waldorf, when he and Daryl began to date.

Daryl married John at Immanuel Lutheran Church, Forest City, on August 21, 1949. He later enrolled in the Iowa State Teachers College, Cedar Falls (now UNI); the married student housing consisted of rows of post-World War II Quonset huts.

John’s teaching career took the growing family first to Orient, then Manchester, and finally Charles City. Baby boomers all, Lynn was born in Forest City, Mark in Manchester, Lisa in Vermillion, South Dakota, and Scott in Charles City.

During the working decades in Charles City, Daryl was employed at the high school in the English and Business Education departments. She also worked at NIACC’s Charles City satellite office’s nursing program. In 1965 John left teaching to accept a position at Salsbury Laboratories as a systems and research analyst.

One of Daryl’s favorite Charles City community activities was volunteer work at the public library; perhaps she was proudest of her fundraising work with the Mooney Collection Committee at the library. Their goal was the preservation, restoration, and cataloguing of the Mooney art collection (an ongoing project). Already an accomplished seamstress, she joined the Congregational Church’s hand quilting group, learned that craft, and came to love the satisfying collaboration with her friends in the shared creation of these works of art.

Daryl was a superb household engineer, her various tasks timed to be complete by 1 p.m. to protect her voracious reading. Wednesday’s all-day ironing was an exception to the 1 p.m. rule but allowed her a full day to listen to opera (and sing along) as she starched, sprinkled, refrigerated, and pressed. Her husband and children benefited from her organizational and creative homemaking skills; the supper meal made from scratch was on the table on the dot of 5:30 p.m. The Narveson’s cherish memories of these gatherings. Supper was about much more than Daryl’s menu. It was an hour out of ordinary time: time to be really present, to share, laugh, and tell stories around the family table. While they were not usually at the table (perhaps under it), over the years the family included a collection of quirky canine and feline babies.

Living family members include two daughters and their husbands, Lynn and David Tryggestad, Duluth, MN, and Lisa and Roger Henderson of Grinnell; two sons and their wives, Mark and Jeanne Narveson of Nora Springs, and Scott and Pamela Narveson of Apple Valley, MN. There are six grandchildren and seven great grandchildren; and one brother, Douglas Lundberg of Humboldt, IA. Daryl was preceded in death by her parents, a beloved grandchild Kathryn Jean Heller, her husband John, her brother James.