Obituary

Madeline Jensen was born on December 27^th, 1931 in Elk Point, AB Canada and passed away on February 28^th, 2021 in Bellingham, WA.

Our mother lived most of her life in Ferndale, WA, a small city she truly called her special home. She married Lorne Jensen shortly after he returned home from the Korean War.

She was the world’s best Mom to two sons: Allan Jensen (spouse Sylvia) and Gary Jensen (Spouse Kelly) both of Ferndale. She was a Grandmother to Karri Heisman of Lynden and Taryn Jensen of Seattle. She was also a very proud Great-Grandmother to Mia and Gage Jensen along with Makayla and Emberly Heisman. All of her grandchildren made her eyes sparkle on every visit. It was a very rare occurrence if a babysitting request was not accepted. Her cookie tin and M&M server were magically never empty. The coffee pot was always on for the adults.

She is preceded in passing by her husband Lorne, Mother Ethel Davis, siblings, Hazel, Chester, Sherman, Marshall, Lou, and Laurel Davis, and grandson Steven Jensen.

Our mother immigrated to Ferndale in her teenage years. She attended Ferndale High School (a letter, sweater recipient) and worked her first job at the Soda Fountain located inside the Evergreen Pharmacy. This led to later, expert level milkshake creations and root beer floats. Our house contained a commercial mixing unit that supplied numerous Friday Night Milkshake Nights. We will always remember the large metal cup those shakes came in.

She then moved on to work for Walt and Donna Pullman of the Ferndale Pharmacy. There she met her true friend for life, Bonnie Cratsenberg. They had sleepovers on the beach at Cherry Point just to gossip and laugh under the stars.

Another pursuit was working for the City of Ferndale. You could enter City Hall and pay your water bill, clear a speeding ticket, and check out a library book all from our mother. Paying the speeding ticket might have been interesting to some when the citation was likely issued by our Father, the Police Chief! As the librarian she used her customer service skills to choose books for customers, sometimes even using her youngest son to deliver the books right to your door… years ahead of Amazon!

She loved to volunteer for her small city. She was a Scout Den Mother and a cleaner of massive piles of smelly athletic gear (sorry Mom!). If you purchased a ribbon during the Old Settler’s Picnic, chances are that the small safety pin you used to attach your ribbon was added by our mother’s hand. She worked all year on that task, in addition to rechecking every name printed in the register. She always took extra care to make sure every name was spelled correctly – which surely helps when you seem to be friends with everyone in town. As the wife of the Police Chief and Fire Chief, she also served as the after-hours dispatcher for both. She helped protect Ferndale by answering the blue phone (police calls), or the red phone (fire calls) installed in our home. She graciously taught her entire family how important it is to give back to your community, values that have been instilled in all of her heirs.

We would also like to recognize the employees at The Memory Care wing of Spring Creek.

We hope that she is now entering a Grange Hall somewhere in the County. Across the dance floor awaits a blonde, blue eyed, young Norwegian gentleman. Just like her, he is also a recent transplant from Alberta. We hope they dance… and dance forever.