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Don Swede Thoreson
Born 90 years ago on May 4, 1929 in Miller, SD to a first generation Norwegian immigrant father and an eighth generation English immigrant mother, Swede Thoreson passed peacefully on the morning of Tuesday, July 30, 2019, in Santa Rosa where he was receiving hospice care during a brief hospital stay. He received a public education, graduating from South Kitsap High School in Port Orchard, WA and Eastern Washington State University in Cheney, WA on a football scholarship to play for the Eagles who won their Evergreen Conference in 1950, putting him in the Athletics Hall of Fame for EWSU. He married wife, Barbara, on September 16, 1951 before beginning his high school teaching career in Omak, WA. Industrial Arts was his subject matter and his passion. The couple and their two young children moved to Burlingame in 1958, where Swede taught and coached several sports at Mills High School in Millbrae. He also pursued his Masters from San Francisco State University and a career change to Guidance Counselor at Mills, eventually becoming an Assistant Principal until his retirement in 1987. Along the way came lifelong memories, countless dinner parties and bridge games, family road trips and waterskiing vacations all over the West, explorations of Europe with old friends, his devotion to Barbara's various business ventures, and the 1992 discovery of life's next chapter in Sonoma Valley. The family property in Glen Ellen gave Swede a purpose and a place to use his many talents for building something out of scrap, to test his green thumb, and to welcome many generous neighbors and new friends. He never forgot a face, and his serious side would often give way to teasing a laugh from everyone he met.
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Peter Stennet/Frost
I still remember Don. I was in his office a lot. On May 4th 70' when I started a sit-in at noon in the quad when the bell rang. We didn't get up to go to class, others sat down. Don was turning beet red.
Once he called my mom one morning, I was probably late having to find my own way to school from Shoreview in San Mateo. Sometimes I'd hitchhike on 101 from 3rd Ave. to Murcheson. He told me she hung up on him because her eggs were getting cold. He said something flippant like she must not care about you. I said no, she love me, just just doesn't want to hear it from you.
We'd go out to get high at lunch, the Sims brothers and I. We go climb a tree on the North side of the football field and watch him run around on the hunt, he could smell it.
He's one of the few people I remember from HS after 50 years. He never caught me getting stoned.