Elsie M. Kalvig

Elsie May Kalvig was born February 4, 1923, in Dow City, Iowa, the daughter of William and Lulu Cross. She died at Jennie Edmundson Medical Center in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on January 10, 2017, at the age of ninety-three.
She received her education in the Dow City schools and graduated from Dow City High School with the Class of 1941. She married Henry Daniels March 14, 1945, in Omaha, Nebraska. The couple was blessed with the birth of three children. They made their home in Florida, Minnesota and Wisconsin in the early years of their marriage and subsequently returned to Dow City in 1951, living in an Airstream on her grandmother’s farm.
Elsie was a homemaker and served as a nanny for a few school children as well as helping her husband at the Dow City Hatchery and other businesses that her husband was involved with. She also worked as a waitress in Ettleman’s Cafe before she began a nursing career in 1960, first as a nurses aide and later as a certified LPN. Henry died in 1966 while she was still in nurses training. On June 19, 1973, she was united in marriage to Milford Kalvig and the couple settled in Waterloo, Iowa. Milford died May 25, 2000. After Milford’s death, she moved to Council Bluffs to be closer to her son.
Traveling in their Airstream was a pleasure for Elsie and Henry and she enjoyed vegetable gardening, sewing and crafts, and socializing one-on-one with family and friends. She was also quite the story teller remembering many incidences from her past.
Elsie was preceded in death by her parents; her two husbands; one daughter, Marlene; four sisters: Lillian, Della; Gertrude and Audrey; three brother: William, Leslie and Lawrence. Survivors include: two sons, Donald and his wife, Linda ; and Jerry and his wife, Patty; one son-in-law, Donald; seven grandchildren; twelve great-grandchildren; one great-great-grandchild; other relatives and friends.