Tod and Nancy’s High School Graduation (Right to Left: Tod Iversen, Joan Iversen, Nancy Smyth, Jack Iversen)

Though it may be true that Joan was not my biological mother – she was in every other sense my real mother, always there for us in times of need. She was:

Continue reading →

Jack and Joan Iversen at their wedding in 1969.

This month would have been my parents’ 45th wedding anniversary. It was a second marriage for both of them-if you saw them together, you would not have thought them especially romantic or overtly demonstrative in their affection for each other. But after my mom died in September 2013, Jack was lost without her, and upon hearing that, everyone who knew them commented that they always were together, you rarely saw them apart.

In the final days of Jack’s life, seven months after my mom’s death, he expressed to my sister that one of his few regrets was that he didn’t leave his first wife sooner, so he could have had more time with Joan. Hearing this story, people who didn’t know them exclaim, “it’s a love story.” And yes, I guess it was–just one that was not the cultural stereotype of a love story–quite appropriate for them, I think.

So, in honor of that love story, here are a few photos of them together, beginning with the day they were married (August 1969, a tumultuous time in the world) until their last days together.

Happy Anniversary, Joan and Jack!

Click on any of the photos to see them in a larger image.

A family vacation to Chicago in 1972
Left to right, front: Kristen Iversen, Jill Iversen, Terry Smyth, Tod Iversen
Left to right back: Jack Iversen, Joan Iversen, Nancy Smyth

Joan was my mom in the truest sense of the word.  As a step-daughter I spent many years trying to bridge the gap between child and step child, trying to figure out what makes a ‘real’ mom…trying to find the steps I would need to be a ‘real’ child not a ‘step’ child.  What I discovered was that, as with all things, Joan, had already figured out what I struggled so long to learn.

Love, respect, perseverance mixed with healthy doses of high expectations, seemingly inexhaustible energy and patience which often morphed into stubbornness as she made her thoughts…or dictates known and more importantly had them obeyed….these were the ingredients she used to build a family where there was once none.

How did she take five vastly different, sometimes insecure and lonely children, two parents, a dog and four cats and bend them to her will?  What tools were in this family building arsenal that she employed?  In a word, her master plan revolved around the all important teaching time known as  “Vacation”

She moved us each spring and summer vacation thru family maneuvers with the precision of a field General.  We were given our marching orders as we prepared for our many trips into the world as a collective unit, orders which we either followed to a “T” or we learned to get out of the way and blame Jill.

Our travels brought us to every historical village, monument , battle site and museum that Joan could use to enrich our knowledge and love of history. She would educate us, expose us to culture and use shared experiences to fill the holes we had lived in.  What she never counted on was that the ways in which  a small and mischievous herd of children would interpret the wonders of history and how this would challenge her own view of the world.

And so our travels and journeys of family discovery began…..history would never be the same for Dr. Joan Iversen….

The stark existence of the Donner pass, the plight of the starving pioneers who built this nation had their image tarnished with the photos of us gorging on oreos…

The sanctity of our nations national monuments were challenged time and time again as we raced to be first, ignoring lines of tourists waiting in line, trampled gardens and spoke thru the entreaties of tour guides and park rangers as we sought bathrooms or a drink to ease our thirst or even  a snack to fill our always hungry bellies,   all the while trying to look like we were paying attention…woe to the one or two of us caught not learning….

“1951 – Thank You Marshall
A parade float at the Dutch Flower Festival, expressing appreciation for the efforts of the Marshall Plan.”

But learn we did…we learned to listen to one another, we learned when to fight and when to turn the other check, we learned to be siblings who stood up to and for each other…and Joan learned too…

She learned when to step in and mediate disputes and when to let us figure things out….she learned that children have a tremendous capacity to love but to not always be lovable

Our trips taught her that the best way to share her passion for learning and her love of history was with a sense of humor and by ditching us occasionally to ride the buses endlessly around Colonial Williamsburg while she and dad recovered their strength with a ration of gin and tonics.

Condensing our family time into weeks of vacation, squeezing us into small spaces where we had to be together, were all part of Field Marshall Joan’s master plan.

The successes and occasional failures we encountered as Joan prodded, pushed and persuaded us to assume the roles we have learned to relish are the learning curves we had to follow.  Our travels to Miles Standish, Jekyll Island, Tom’s Cove, Outdoor Resorts, Key Largo Kampground and our summer long trip across country were the encampments that brought us together.

It was Joan’s love and often fiery emotional leadership that brought us to a place of family.  It is her generous nature, her inability to back down, her strength as a women, a teacher, a mom that I will most remember.  It is Joan’s legacy that this family she rebuilt from a place of pain to a position of strength….will endure.  My siblings at arms are raising the next generation of strong, intelligent, sometimes stubborn and  independent children…in the hopes that the love they have learned from us, thru Joan will give them a future as bright as the one she gave us.

~Kristen Iversen Cartwright

Marshall Plan float photo courtesy of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on Flickr

The Iversen-Smyth Family (1976)
Top left to right: Terry Smyth, Jack Iversen, Joan Smyth Iversen; Bottom left to right: Tod Iversen, Kristen Iversen, Nancy Smyth, Jill Iversen

An earlier version of these reflections was read by Nancy Smyth, Joan’s oldest child, at Joan Iversen’s Memorial Service, September 20, 2013.

My mother was a force of nature–a force for the universe to reckon with — we once jokingly called her “Hurricane Joan” not because she destroyed things, but because she was such a big presence, making her own path in the world, with such a large impact. If she decided that your life needed fixing or organizing, you didn’t stand a chance of resisting. Continue reading →