FORKS — The West End community has lost a volunteer organizer, mother, church leader and “great baker.”
Forks resident Elizabeth “Betty” Soderlind, 95, died Friday at her home of complications from a fall.
Soderlind — named a 1993 Clallam County Citizen of the Year — was involved in the Quillayute Valley School District, Forks Food Bank, St. Anne Catholic Church and other community service projects.
Services will be held Saturday at St. Anne Catholic Church, 511 Fifth Ave.
Visitation will be held from 10 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., followed by the rosary at 10:30 a.m.
Funeral Mass will be held at 11 a.m. with Father Mark Stehly.
She will be interred at the Forks Cemetery beside her late husband, Lawrence Soderlind.
There will be a reception at St. Anne Church following the burial.
Born July 13, 1919 in Desart, S.D., to Erskine and Bessie (DeSart) Johnson, she attended the St. John’s Hospital School of Nursing in Fargo, N.D., and graduated as a registered nurse in 1942.
In 1945, she moved to Vancouver, Wash., to work in a veterans hospital to care for soldiers injured in World War II, where she met Lawrence Soderlind, who was a patient.
The couple married in 1949 and moved to Forks, where Lawrence worked as a log truck driver.
Their seven children are Mary Haley, David Soderlind, John Soderlind, Mark Soderlind, Allison White, Ann Desart and Dan Soderlind.
She also had 20 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren.
Two of Soderlind’s daughters, Haley and White, remembered their mother’s service to her family, community and church while visiting the family home Sunday.
They said their mother was a leader of the Catholic community in Forks and provided motivation behind many of the church and secular social service programs.
“She was called the Bishop of Forks,” Haley said.
“Even the archbishop of Seattle called her that. She hated it,” White added, saying that her mother did not seek recognition.
She received it anyway, and in 1993, she was one of three recipients of the Clallam County Community Service Award.
The sisters said their mother walked the walk of her faith, serving her fellow human beings whenever possible.
“Whomever she was talking to, she listened. She really listened,” White said.
She would sit with children or teenagers or other adults and engage in whatever discussions it took to learn about that person, she said.
Soderlind was very progressive in her politics, with the exception of the abortion issue, but when it came to helping those who were “down and out,” she was the first to lend a hand, they said.
The sisters said she made meals for prisoners at the Forks jail, wrote a grant to move the Forks Food Bank to its own space, opened a clothing bank, raised funds for college scholarships with the Quillayute Valley Education Foundation and was active in the United Way.
She also pitched in to help when first Vietnamese and later Latino immigrants arrived in Forks and needed help establishing households and securing employment.
Soderlind was also part of the efforts to build a new Catholic Church in 1951 and its replacement in 1971, the current home of St. Anne Catholic Church.
“She wasn’t a great chef, but she was a great baker,” Haley said.
Soderlind made pies for the Quillayute Valley Scholarship Auction that often sold for $100 each or more, the sisters said.
“School was huge to her,” Haley said.
While the Soderlind children were in school, most of her efforts were related to education, but when the last of them graduated, she began volunteering her time with more varied projects, the sisters said.
Each of the children has taken up their mother’s example in volunteering, they said.
Her son Mark has become a volunteer leader and was recently nominated as Forks Volunteer of the Year for his work as the Fourth of July committee chair and a member of the Jefferson Community Hospital advisory board.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arwyn.rice@peninsuladailynews.com.
