The Pilot-Independent has printed the names of this town’s dead since 1897, one or two at a time, each in its week, each week moving on. This page does not move on. It keeps them together — the quilters and the mechanics, the organists and the plowers of other people’s driveways — with the line the town remembered them by.

Leona Mattson, 94
No. 18 · May 5, 2026
Remembered for quilts, garden rows, and never once buying tomatoes after July.

Russell “Rusty” Berg, 82
No. 19 · May 12, 2026
A mechanic, veteran, and teller of stories that required a second cup. For forty winters he plowed his neighbors’ driveways before dawn and never once sent a bill.

Gladys Rantala, 89
No. 20 · May 19, 2026
Remembered for quilting, cinnamon rolls, and the phrase “that’ll hold.” It held.

Marian Olson, 96
No. 21 · May 26, 2026
Church pianist, pie judge, and formidable left-handed cribbage player.

Earl Magnuson, 88
No. 22 · June 2, 2026
A quiet woodsman, cribbage partner, and reliable source of rope.

Orville “Ole” Tollefson, 91
No. 23 · June 9, 2026
Lifelong resident, lifelong angler, holder of the record for consecutive Sundays on the water — and, for fifty-two years, the other half of this newspaper’s editor. The flag on this page flew at half-staff, in spirit, the week his name was set in type here.

Doris Eleanor Knutson, 93
No. 24 · June 16, 2026
Schoolteacher for thirty-eight years, church organist, and the last word on the spelling of everything. The district’s fall bee now bears her name, its certificates printed — by direction — in green ink.

Gordon “Gordy” Lindstrom, 86
No. 25 · June 23, 2026
Mechanic, Legionnaire, keeper of the shelf marked MIGHT NEED — he kept half the Chain’s outboards running for thirty-five years and never once charged for air.

Lorraine Vekved, 90
No. 25 · June 23, 2026
First Lutheran’s organist for fifty-one years, and the reason the congregation never once sang a hymn too fast.

Esther Nordby, 92
No. 28 · July 14, 2026
She kept the weather — every Misquah morning for sixty-three years, in green spiral notebooks, without once saying what she thought of it.

Arvid Paulson, 89
No. 30 · July 28, 2026
Sixty summers of sweet corn on County 12 — picked at six, sold by nine, priced fair and rounded down. He knew where everybody lived.

Nos. 26, 27, and 29 carried no obituaries — quiet weeks, gratefully logged. When the next name comes, as names do, it will be kept here with the rest.

The bound volumes are in the front room of the old creamery, and the coffee there is on.