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A child of the Depression and the Big War (turning 21 a week after V-J Day), Iris Brunengo would always remember hanging out with the Montavilla girls drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes and waiting for the boys to come home. She passed away June 19th, after almost 92 years of family, friendship, work, travel – a long and well-lived life. 

Iris Marigold Lundstrom (she really disliked the “Marigold” part) was born August 23, 1924 in Hoquiam, Washington, to John and Helga (Johansson) Lundstrom. They had emigrated separately (but betrothed?) in the early 1920s from Västerbotten County, near Umeå in northern Sweden. John was then working at a sawmill in nearby Montesano, but the family moved to Portland in 1925 for better opportunities, settling in Montavilla among many other Scandinavians. John was a concrete finisher for Lindstrom & Feigenson Co. contractors, working on Oregon highway bridges at Waldport and St. Johns, as well as Bonneville Dam; and Helga was a furrier and seamstress, a proud member of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union and fervent Roosevelt supporter. Iris’ only sibling Doris (O’Reilly) joined the family in 1930. They were quarantined together for several weeks in 1936 due to scarlet fever, and remained close until Doris’ death in 1999. 

Even with that enforced “vacation”, Iris excelled throughout her school years at Hudson and Vestal elementary schools, and then Clinton Kelly High School of Commerce (now Cleveland). There she won awards for shorthand and typing speed, wrote and edited The Blotter newspaper (and so could explain whether to use I or me in any particular sentence), played violin in the orchestra, and skied at Mt. Hood; summers were spent picking berries, beans and hops. Before “scrapbook” became a verb, she mounted clippings about her friends and news about the early years of WWII, and continued to collect and arrange photos of family and travels all her life. 

Since college wasn’t a serious option for working-class immigrants’ daughters – even those consistently on the high school honor roll – in 1942 Iris started riding the streetcar around Mt. Tabor to secretarial jobs in downtown Portland. Her first major gig was in the Bonneville Power Administration, working for economists who were marketing all that electricity being generated at Bonneville and Grand Coulee dams. She was laid off at war’s end (RIF’ed, we say now – the boys coming home wasn’t a totally unmitigated boon), but then landed a position as secretary for attorneys Gus Solomon (who became a federal judge in 1950) and Ray Kell. They were closely connected to the Democratic Party and New Dealers: Justice William O. Douglas would occasionally stop in to do paperwork while in the Northwest during the Supreme Court’s summer recess; Kell ran Terry Shrunk’s campaign for mayor of Portland. And it was a challenging workplace: Iris remembered having to devise a way to depict “quintessential” in shorthand – apparently not part of the standard Gregg course at Commerce. She worked for them until mid-1951. 

During the post-war years, leisure time was occupied socializing and skiing with friends, especially Montavilla Scandihoovians and Commerce schoolmates, and attending the many weddings that were igniting the baby boom. It was at the Tosti nuptials in 1948 that she was introduced by mutual friends Hap Hughes and Walt Cooney to John Brunengo – a Sellwood Italian (both families had a bit of trouble with that), recently discharged Navy officer, Oregon State grad, rising businessman – and a Republican! – the basis for many intrafamily political “discussions” over the decades. 

They married January 27, 1951, and after apartment living moved in 1952 to a house in the new neighborhood called “Eastmoreland Heights” to lampoon the older and tonier district below 39th Ave. They and their children Matthew (born 1953), Diane (1954) and Victoria (1958) soon outgrew that house (just one real bathroom!), and the couple supervised construction of a bigger place waaaay out on Mt. Scott. They moved in September 1962, in time to experience the Columbus Day Storm, wondering in the dark if those big fir trees – not to mention the house – would survive the winds on that exposed ridge. Stranded out in the wilds of Happy Valley, Iris finally had to learn to drive (at almost 40) for visiting, shopping and car-pooling. She was never enthusiastic about it, especially after rolling off an icy curve in 1968 – and John would joke that she had railway tracks to the homes of Helga, Doris and a few friends, plus the schools and stores (crossing the Willamette – almost never). The area was much more rural then, and over 50 years the family watched the view across the valley toward Mt. Hood fill with houses, from that home and another built in 1990 next door to Victoria’s family, in their former horse pasture just uphill. 

In early 1964, Iris’ mother married Hjalmar Nelson (1898–1984), a widower, woodworker, guitarist and fiddler; a millwright who had recently moved back to Portland to refurbish the Dwyer plywood mill in Lents. He also had emigrated from Västerbotten with his wife in the early 1920s, on the same ship as Helga, and they reconnected. Childless himself, Hjalmar legally adopted Iris and Doris in 1981. After his death, and later suffering a broken hip in 1992, Helga moved in with Iris and John until her death in 2001. 

Raised a Lutheran and Methodist, Iris was an honorary Catholic from the 1950s in Holy Family and St. Peter parishes of Southeast Portland. After a quick course in papism, she was confirmed in 1978 – but the priest quipped that most folks weren’t aware that she wasn’t already Catholic. 

In her role as home-maker, Iris was a talented and sometimes daringly experimental cook. Besides great fried chicken, pot roast, after-ski soup, Thanksgiving turkey, Easter ham and such, she liked to make traditional Swedish pancakes and meatballs, palt (potato dumplings, served with butter and lingonberries), and fläskpannkokor (baked pancake with salt pork) – the latter two usually when John was away on business trips. But lutfisk – not so much (thankfully). She also mastered basic Italian cooking: her spaghetti sauce and polenta were excellent (despite John’s ritualistic “not as good as my mother’s…”), and kept trying with frittata. She made great fried clams, though she didn’t much like clams herself. 

Iris was always an expert seamstress and knitter, having learned early – it was almost the family business, as her mother and sister both worked in the garment trade. She made clothes for the kids, knitted afghan blankets, and eventually took over the washcloth franchise from her mother. In the 1980s, she learned to work with ceramics from her friend Kathryn Eshleman, creating seasonal centerpieces, soup bowls and nacho platters. 

While the kids were growing up, their activities were a focus of home life. Iris served as a leader for Diane’s and Victoria’s Bluebird, Brownie, and 4–H groups, and organized their music and dance lessons. (Matt’s sports and scouts were John’s department.) At the kids’ schools, she was a lunch-lady at Holy Family (thought the nuns were way too strict); she loved helping run the St. Peter’s library, until the school closed in 1972. She then volunteered her time and office skills at Catholic Family Services until 1985, earning Outstanding Volunteer award in 1982. 

All her life Iris took advantage of opportunities to get out of town, near and far. In the post-war 1940s she rode the rails to LA to visit friends, dancing at the Palladium and spotting stars in Hollywood, and sailed on a steamer up the Inside Passage to Alaska. She was never a camper or golfer (sometimes a golf widow – maybe a welcome respite), but enjoyed family drives, picnics, day-hikes and fishing trips to the Gorge and Cascades, and resumed skiing in the mid-‘60s, with spring-break trips to Sun Valley and Sunriver. Starting in the early ‘50s and into the ‘70s, they relocated for a week or two almost every summer to the Oregon Coast, usually Seaside or Cannon Beach, where Iris, Beverly Cooney and Violet Miller (a friend since childhood) were tag-team “beach moms” for a troupe of free-range kids. It was a logical next step when the Brunengos bought a condo in Gearhart in 1984, and later built a vacation house nearby. They spent many weekends there, even became well-recognized participants in the town’s 4th of July parade, before selling the house to friends in 2007. 

Farther afield, Iris and John really got around. They flew to Europe in ’72 where (besides London and Rome) they visited both their parents’ families in Sweden and Italy; and journeyed with the kids to Acapulco and Mexico City in ’79, and to Maui for a 50th anniversary celebration in 2001. Thanks to John’s business trips and conventions, they went to Hawai’i many times, all around the West (Seattle, Reno/Tahoe/Yosemite, Phoenix, Santa Fe), as well as to Washington D.C., New England, New York and New Orleans. They even made a few international junkets, to Rio de Janeiro, Portugal, Japan and Hong Kong. Over the years, Iris rode a mule on Molokai, sat on the Spanish Steps, climbed a pyramid at Teotihuacán, saw the shrines of Kyoto, among many other adventures –“pretty good for a kid from Montavilla”, she would say. 

Back at the ranch, Iris devoured paperback ”historical romance” novels by the shelf-full – once or twice getting a couple dozen pages into a new one before realizing she’d read it before. But she also read the old Life and Saturday Evening Post, Time-Life history books, Sunset, National Geographic, Time, and multiple household magazines – and by example, ensured her kids became incorrigible readers. She was a big fan of the TrailBlazers, enjoying games in Memorial Coliseum and on TV. She and John attended Portland Opera over several seasons – she was partial to the lighter works – but really preferred musical theater, in Portland or when traveling, and the Pops series at the symphony. (She always said she never liked Bach, either as a violinist or a listener, and wasn’t that wild about Beethoven.) 

Iris moved to Gearhart after John’s death in 2012, living in a house over the back fence from Diane’s family. She continued to read, sip late-harvest Riesling, and watch Jeopardy, As Time Goes By and Globe-Trekker. She was doing well until suffering a bad case of shingles (with associated nerve damage) in February 2014, but nevertheless enjoyed the company and good wishes of dozens of family and friends at a 90th birthday party that August. Her health declined in the past year, though she managed to stay at home almost until the end, thanks to Diane’s heroic efforts. 

Iris was preceded in death by her three parents, sister Doris, and husband John. She is survived by her children Matt Brunengo, Diane (Frank) Dieni, and Victoria (Alistair) Cox; and her grandchildren Kimmie Dieni, Megan Cox and Geoff Cox. She also leaves several generations of nieces and nephews in the extended Brunengo and O’Reilly families, and cousins in Sweden. 

Iris died on Midsomer’s eve – a big (or long, anyway) day in Västerbotten, less than 200 miles from the arctic circle where it’s light (and the mosquitoes are out) all night. We couldn’t find a surplus Viking longship (or get the permits) for a blazing send-off across Necanicum estuary – so instead, family and friends are invited to share a meal and memories of Iris at a celebration of life at noon on July 29th, at the Aerie at Eagle Landing (10220 Causey Ave., Happy Valley; theaerieateaglelanding.com). Those so inclined may also attend an inurnment ceremony at the family plot in Gethsemani Cemetery (11666 SE Stevens Rd., www.ccpdxor.com) at 11:30. (For details/RSVP: mbrunengo@aol.com.) 

Mom loved to read, and counted her years managing the little library at St. Peter's School among her most treasured memories. In light of that, please feel free to bring a new or gently used children’s book for donation to the Children's Book Bank (www.childrensbookbank.org/give-books-1/). In addition, the family wishes to thank her many care-givers in the past two years – in lieu of flowers, contributions in Iris’ name can be made to Lower Columbia Hospice (Astoria; lowercolumbiahospice.org) or Samaritan Evergreen Hospice (Albany; www.samhealth.org/find-a-location/s/samaritan-evergreen-hospice/).

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Iris Lundstrom Brunengo Obituary | Altogether