Iris Hazel Lien Carlson, 100

Iris Hazel Lien Carlson was born on November 9, 1911, in Greenbush, Minnesota, to Norwegian farmers Amund and Karen Lien. She attended St. Cloud State Teachers College, and then taught in the one-room schools of northern Minnesota. While working in Minneapolis, having left teaching for a time, she became reacquainted with Gerald Carlson, whom she had known slightly in Greenbush. They married and moved back to the farm belonging to Gerald’s stepfather, where their children Elwood and Marla were born. Gerald inherited the farm, but the family moved to eastern Oregon in 1956, and Hazel’s brothers Gilman and Andrew Lien worked the land together with their own. Hazel taught first at Burns and at Hines Elementary until her retirement in 1974. She then lived in Portland, Oregon, where she enjoyed painting, quilting, and traveling. In 1995, she moved to Columbia, South Carolina, and in 2004 to Tallahassee, Florida, where family gathered from around the country in November 2011 to celebrate her hundredth birthday. She passed away quite suddenly on May 2, 2012. Her ashes will be interred in Burns, Oregon at the gravesite of Gerald Elwood Carlson, deceased in 1971. Hazel is survived by  a sister, Ada Eide of Minneapolis; son Elwood Carlson and wife Judy Harlow of Tallahassee; granddaughters Ingrid Carlson Boozer and Lisa Carlson and great-grandson Charles Elwood Carlson of Portland; daughter Marla Carlson and husband Tony Dardis of Brooklyn, New York; and grandson Eli Ivor Dardis of Brooklyn. The family suggests donations to a local public library’s collection of large-print books in her memory. She particularly enjoyed mysteries, travel narratives, and history.