Gladys Irene Rantala, 89, of Misquah, died Sunday, May 17, 2026, at the Lakeview care home in Pinedale. She kept the old ways longest of anyone, and the town is quieter, and a good deal less Finnish, without her.

She was born January 8, 1937, on the Rantala homestead north of town, the daughter of Eino and Aino (Mäki) Rantala, in a farmhouse beside a sauna her grandfather had built and she would tend for the rest of her life. She married Onni Rantala — a distant cousin, a coincidence she found endlessly funny — in 1957, and together they worked the farm and raised three children. Onni died in 1998.

Gladys was a charter member of the First Lutheran Ladies’ Aid, an authority on blueberry pie whose verdicts were accepted as final, and the last reliable keeper of the Saturday sauna, to which she welcomed neighbors of every denomination and several of none. She spoke Finnish to her plants, her grandchildren, and, in moments of strong feeling, the Vikings, and she maintained to the end that the lake water had been warmer when she was young — a claim no one could disprove and no one wished to.

She is survived by her three children, Linda (Wayne) Koski of Misquah, Dennis (Sandra) Rantala of Pinedale, and Karen Mäki of the Twin Cities; by eight grandchildren and six great-grandchildren; and by a sauna that will not be the same. Services will be held Saturday, May 23, at 11 a.m. at First Lutheran Church, with burial in the church cemetery and a lunch — including blueberry pie — to follow. Memorials are preferred to the First Lutheran building fund and to the area historical society, that the old ways be written down before the rest of us forget them.