Orville Theodore “Ole” Tollefson, 91, of Misquah, died Thursday, June 4, 2026, at his home, surrounded by his family. He had lived in that house, on the home quarter east of town, for all ninety-one of his years — born in the upstairs bedroom on February 3, 1935, and never afterward finding a compelling reason to leave it.

He was the son of Theodore and Inga (Solberg) Tollefson, who farmed the same ground before him. He attended the Misquah school through the eighth grade and then took up the farm, raising small grains and a modest dairy herd and, later, corn and soybeans, until he turned the operation over to his sons in 2001 — turned it over, the family is careful to note, while continuing to drive past daily to see how they were getting on with it.

Ole married Marvella Knutson on June 18, 1961, at First Lutheran Church, where the two had been baptized, confirmed, and seated — separately — for years before either worked up the nerve. Their marriage lasted sixty-four years. Marvella survives him, edits this newspaper, and set this notice into type herself, which she asks the reader to understand was not the easiest column she has run.

He was a man of few words, most of them concerning the weather and nearly all of them, by the testimony of those who farmed near him, correct. He held the unofficial all-time record for consecutive Sundays in the third pew at First Lutheran — a record the family does not expect to see challenged, the third pew being, after his decades of effort, firmly spoken for.

He could read a lake the way other men read the front page. He knew where the walleye were holding on Big Pelican before, his sons maintain, the walleye had quite settled the matter themselves, and he shared this knowledge with no one — a discretion his sons have spent some years making their peace with, and have very nearly managed.

He is survived by his wife, Marvella; by three children, Theodore (Susan) of Misquah, Karen (Dale) Ouellette of Brainerd, and Paul of the Twin Cities; by nine grandchildren and four great-grandchildren; by a brother, Harold, of Bemidji; and by one fourteen-foot Lund boat, which he has directed, in writing and in no uncertain terms, is not to be sold to “anybody from the lake.” He was preceded in death by his parents and by a sister, Dorothy, in infancy.

Funeral services will be held Saturday, June 13, at 11 a.m. at First Lutheran Church, the Rev. Karl Lindholm officiating, with burial to follow in the church cemetery. Visitation will be held one hour prior. A lunch will follow in the church basement — which is, the family notes, exactly as he would have wanted it, and where he would have wanted you to take a little more than you think you need.

Arrangements are with Nilsen Funeral Home. Memorials may be directed to the First Lutheran basement roof fund, a cause Ole supported quietly and, his wife adds, skeptically.