Norma Jean Petersen West passed away on April 12, 2026, at age 96. She was born May 29, 1929, at the Milltown Hospital to Sigvald and Sophie (Petersen) Petersen. Sophie immigrated from Moen, Denmark, as a child, and Sig was a first-generation Danish American. The family benefitted from the love and nurturing of the extended Petersen families and the West Denmark community.
Life on the farm during those Depression years was challenging for the young and growing family. Donna Mae was born 15 months after Norma, and Marjorie Jane was born five years later. Sophie was incapacitated by an illness when the girls were very young, and Sig kept the family together on the farm by driving school bus and eventually owning a trucking business.
Norma graduated from Milltown High School in 1947, moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, to attend business college, and lived at the Danish Young People’s Home. She worked at a Minneapolis insurance company and kept close to her roots by taking the train home many weekends. Even so, she traveled to the East Coast with a friend from work. She later spent a year in Los Angeles where she worked for Southern California Power & Light before moving back to Wisconsin in 1953. She worked in the office at Duncan Yo-Yo in Luck, and enjoyed being close to her sisters and their babies.
Norma met Donald West at the wedding rehearsal of her friend Louann Johansen and Donald’s friend Roger Friberg. Donald gave Norma a ride home that night, and they were married a year later on August 21, 1954, at the West Denmark Lutheran Church near Luck. They built a home in West Sweden, and welcomed the birth of Arlene in 1955, and Andrea in 1967. She and Donald enjoyed the bounty of the garden, their woods and local lakes. Norma was known as a great cook and hostess who welcomed all for cozy coffees, dinners and sometimes extended stays. She began working at the Frederic Post Office in 1960 and retired as postmaster in 1989.
She was a quietly dependable, generous, and thoughtful person, averse to the spotlight but observant and concerned for the needs of her family, friends and neighbors. In Norma’s later years, glaucoma and macular degeneration took her vision. She accepted the challenges with grace and continued to enjoy phone conversations, audiobooks, and the music and religious programs at her residence in Woodbury, Minnesota. Mentally sharp until the end, she was the communication hub for her daughters, granddaughters, and cousins.
Norma was preceded in death by her husband, Donald; her parents; and many good and treasured friends. She was closely followed in death by her sister Donna Mae Pedersen nine hours later. A dear friend Midge also passed just minutes after Norma.
Her legacy will live on in her two daughters, Arlene (Kevin Bevis) and Andrea (Michael Kowalski); grandchildren, Martin (Beth Bernhardt), Lillian (Brandon Bell), and Charles (Nina Sherburne) Bevis, and Elizabeth and Vivian Kowalski; great-grandchildren, Camille and Sigvald Bevis, and Edward and Clara Bell; and 14 nieces and nephews.
We have shed our tears and now wish to celebrate the life of a strong and loving woman. True to her character, Norma’s final act of generosity and service to others was the donation of her body to Mayo Clinic for the purpose of advancing medical education, research, and clinical practice.
“Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.” —John Wesley
Cremains will be interred at the West Sweden Town Cemetery at a later date. A funeral will be held April 18, 2026, at 2 p.m., visitation one hour prior, at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church, Frederic, Wisconsin.
