Gloria Kallevig
August 20, 1930 — September 20, 2022
Gloria Faye Wiig was born August 20th, 1930 in Irwin, Iowa to Hjalmer S. and Isabel (Nelson) Wiig. While still a small child her parents moved to an acreage 3.5 miles SE of Irwin.
In 1937 the family moved to Oxford, Pennsylvania to be near Hjalmer's brother, C.C. Wiig. Their children attended school for 18 months until their return to Iowa. In 1944 they moved from the country into Irwin and Gloria graduated with the class of 1947. After graduating, she went to Willmar, Minnesota to visit a cousin. While there, Gloria took a job as a waitress at the Puritan Café, where she met the cook, Carroll Kallevig. She found him very attractive, as he did her! After a short courtship they came back to Irwin so Carroll could meet Gloria's family. All went well and they married at her parent's home on May 28th, 1950.
The new couple remained in Iowa and started their family. Jeanne, Shari, Sheldon, and Jennifer kept her busy and happy at home. Gloria and Carroll joined the Church of Christ and became involved in church activities. She sang in the choir, joined the Ladies Missionary Society (acting as president one year) and helped out at funerals and other events.
Gloria loved to sing, and with a friend, Marianne Clark, and sister Dolores, they started playing guitars and singing for their own enjoyment. Soon they were asked to entertain at other occasions. During the Irwin Centennial in 1981, she joined the Women's Kitchen Band that traveled and played in many towns for an entire year.
Each summer Gloria and Carroll and the kids would travel to Minnesota to visit family and friends there, which was very enjoyable. Gloria gave all of her children the happiest of childhoods.
A Crisis:
In the life of our mother there was one event that we would like to speak of here, for it affected every area of her life forever after. In those days (the mid 1980's) her husband had recently rededicated his life to Christ. This had brought about a crisis in her own life, with much perplexity of soul and a great spiritual struggle.
Someone had given her a tract called ‘True or False Conversion’. As she later put it, as she was meditating on what she had read, and feeling hopeless despair at her own sin, she became aware of a bright light shining on and in her, revealing darkness within her heart. As she stared in horror and wondered what to do, a voice on the left said: "Jesus' blood is sufficient for all your sin", and a vision of Jesus appeared on her dining room wall. He was hanging on the cross and a river of blood pouring from His side, the blood suddenly within her going round and round inside her chest.
As she stared in wonder, her heart became intensely white, whiter than snow. She ran to her bedroom, fell on her knees and confessed her sins to God with tears and remorse. She felt a great release come off her shoulders and this time the voice said: "As far as the East from the West, I'll remember your sins no more." She looked up and saw a large hand in the corner of the ceiling, writing something in a big book. She said that she knew it was her name that God was writing in this book. And to her great joy, though she did not yet know it, such a book is mentioned in the Bible: The Lamb's Book of Life, wherein are written the names of all those who call upon His name from a pure heart. Rev. 21:27
Little did she ever suspect that her name, which was derived from glory, (one of the attributes of God) would one day be hers to glimpse, in this vision. After this experience, she was like 'the woman at the well' that told all her townspeople, "come meet a Man that told me everything I ever did!"
Thereafter she and her husband dedicated all that they were and did to His glory. Outwardly, they were the most common and ordinary of people. But now God had become a household God, and He had an altar in their dwelling, the flames of which never went out while they lived. Reverence for His word and for His obedience marked their life.
If, in the age to come, we discover that towns are spared calamities because of the fervent prayers of those who love them, then it shall likely be seen that Irwin was spared a thousand calamities, from the prayers of our mother. Her prayers were no doubt joined--in God's eyes- -with the other believers in Christ, for Irwin and its surrounding cities.
For she was a woman that prayed much, not only for her fellow-citizens, but for the prosperity of her beloved town.
For her, Irwin, Iowa was a province of pure poetry, and no other place on earth held its charms. For here was the place of her youth. It had no rivals. While others sallied forth to see a wide world, she was content beyond measure to dwell within the boundaries of her charming village, in the lush and lovely Nishnabotna Valley, with its windmills, rolling hills and trickling streams. And it was the memories of her younger and middle years that were received back again, as a rich inheritance in her old age, when her eyes and ears gave no more.
Gloria went home to be with her Lord and Savior on September 20th, 2022 having attained the age of 92 years, 31 days. She was preceded in death by her husband, Carroll Kallevig, after enjoying 65 years of marriage together before his unexpected stroke in 2015. Daughter Shari lost her battle with cancer in 2012. Also preceding her were her parents Hjalmar and Isabel Wiig; sister Thelma and husband Melvin Nelson; brother Hilmer and wife Glendeen Wiig: sister Dolores and husband Howard Mickelson; daughter-in-law Teri Kallevig: 3 infant brothers and 1 infant sister.
Gloria is survived by her daughter, Jeanne (Greg) Taylor of Fresno, California; son Sheldon Kallevig of Kansas City, Missouri; daughter Jennifer (Ron) French of Manilla, Iowa; 13 grandchildren; 24 great grandchildren; 3 great, great grandchildren; son-in-law Alan Petersen of Irwin, Iowa; nieces, nephews and many friends.
Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. James 4:8
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Matt. 5:8
But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Hebrews 11:6
“The heart has its reasons, which Reason does not know. We feel it in a thousand things. It is the heart which feels God, and not Reason. This, then, is perfect faith: God felt in the heart.”
“The dignity of man consists in thought.” Blaise Pascal
“Nature asks...calmly and inevitably, What have you found, or formed - the right or the wrong? By the right thing you shall live, by the wrong you shall die.”
“There are things that must be sought before seen, loved before understood.”
“Balance well the difference between those who worship and those who worship not; - that difference which there is in the sight of God, in all ages, between calculating, smiling, self-sustained, self governed man, and the believing, weeping, wondering, struggling, Heaven-governed man; - between the men who say in their hearts “there is no God,” and those who acknowledge a God at every step, “if haply they might feel after Him and find Him.” John Ruskin
Let our chief endeavor be to meditate upon the life of Jesus Christ.
Truly sublime words do not make a man holy and just; but a virtuous life maketh him dear to God.
Vanity of vanities! all is vanity, but to love God and serve him only.
It is therefore vanity to seek after perishing riches.
He is truly great, that is great in love.
He is truly wise, that accounteth all earthly things dung, that he may win Christ.
And he is truly learned that doth the will of God, and forsaketh his own will.
Thomas Kempis
In 1937 the family moved to Oxford, Pennsylvania to be near Hjalmer's brother, C.C. Wiig. Their children attended school for 18 months until their return to Iowa. In 1944 they moved from the country into Irwin and Gloria graduated with the class of 1947. After graduating, she went to Willmar, Minnesota to visit a cousin. While there, Gloria took a job as a waitress at the Puritan Café, where she met the cook, Carroll Kallevig. She found him very attractive, as he did her! After a short courtship they came back to Irwin so Carroll could meet Gloria's family. All went well and they married at her parent's home on May 28th, 1950.
The new couple remained in Iowa and started their family. Jeanne, Shari, Sheldon, and Jennifer kept her busy and happy at home. Gloria and Carroll joined the Church of Christ and became involved in church activities. She sang in the choir, joined the Ladies Missionary Society (acting as president one year) and helped out at funerals and other events.
Gloria loved to sing, and with a friend, Marianne Clark, and sister Dolores, they started playing guitars and singing for their own enjoyment. Soon they were asked to entertain at other occasions. During the Irwin Centennial in 1981, she joined the Women's Kitchen Band that traveled and played in many towns for an entire year.
Each summer Gloria and Carroll and the kids would travel to Minnesota to visit family and friends there, which was very enjoyable. Gloria gave all of her children the happiest of childhoods.
A Crisis:
In the life of our mother there was one event that we would like to speak of here, for it affected every area of her life forever after. In those days (the mid 1980's) her husband had recently rededicated his life to Christ. This had brought about a crisis in her own life, with much perplexity of soul and a great spiritual struggle.
Someone had given her a tract called ‘True or False Conversion’. As she later put it, as she was meditating on what she had read, and feeling hopeless despair at her own sin, she became aware of a bright light shining on and in her, revealing darkness within her heart. As she stared in horror and wondered what to do, a voice on the left said: "Jesus' blood is sufficient for all your sin", and a vision of Jesus appeared on her dining room wall. He was hanging on the cross and a river of blood pouring from His side, the blood suddenly within her going round and round inside her chest.
As she stared in wonder, her heart became intensely white, whiter than snow. She ran to her bedroom, fell on her knees and confessed her sins to God with tears and remorse. She felt a great release come off her shoulders and this time the voice said: "As far as the East from the West, I'll remember your sins no more." She looked up and saw a large hand in the corner of the ceiling, writing something in a big book. She said that she knew it was her name that God was writing in this book. And to her great joy, though she did not yet know it, such a book is mentioned in the Bible: The Lamb's Book of Life, wherein are written the names of all those who call upon His name from a pure heart. Rev. 21:27
Little did she ever suspect that her name, which was derived from glory, (one of the attributes of God) would one day be hers to glimpse, in this vision. After this experience, she was like 'the woman at the well' that told all her townspeople, "come meet a Man that told me everything I ever did!"
Thereafter she and her husband dedicated all that they were and did to His glory. Outwardly, they were the most common and ordinary of people. But now God had become a household God, and He had an altar in their dwelling, the flames of which never went out while they lived. Reverence for His word and for His obedience marked their life.
If, in the age to come, we discover that towns are spared calamities because of the fervent prayers of those who love them, then it shall likely be seen that Irwin was spared a thousand calamities, from the prayers of our mother. Her prayers were no doubt joined--in God's eyes- -with the other believers in Christ, for Irwin and its surrounding cities.
For she was a woman that prayed much, not only for her fellow-citizens, but for the prosperity of her beloved town.
For her, Irwin, Iowa was a province of pure poetry, and no other place on earth held its charms. For here was the place of her youth. It had no rivals. While others sallied forth to see a wide world, she was content beyond measure to dwell within the boundaries of her charming village, in the lush and lovely Nishnabotna Valley, with its windmills, rolling hills and trickling streams. And it was the memories of her younger and middle years that were received back again, as a rich inheritance in her old age, when her eyes and ears gave no more.
Gloria went home to be with her Lord and Savior on September 20th, 2022 having attained the age of 92 years, 31 days. She was preceded in death by her husband, Carroll Kallevig, after enjoying 65 years of marriage together before his unexpected stroke in 2015. Daughter Shari lost her battle with cancer in 2012. Also preceding her were her parents Hjalmar and Isabel Wiig; sister Thelma and husband Melvin Nelson; brother Hilmer and wife Glendeen Wiig: sister Dolores and husband Howard Mickelson; daughter-in-law Teri Kallevig: 3 infant brothers and 1 infant sister.
Gloria is survived by her daughter, Jeanne (Greg) Taylor of Fresno, California; son Sheldon Kallevig of Kansas City, Missouri; daughter Jennifer (Ron) French of Manilla, Iowa; 13 grandchildren; 24 great grandchildren; 3 great, great grandchildren; son-in-law Alan Petersen of Irwin, Iowa; nieces, nephews and many friends.
Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. James 4:8
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Matt. 5:8
But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Hebrews 11:6
“The heart has its reasons, which Reason does not know. We feel it in a thousand things. It is the heart which feels God, and not Reason. This, then, is perfect faith: God felt in the heart.”
“The dignity of man consists in thought.” Blaise Pascal
“Nature asks...calmly and inevitably, What have you found, or formed - the right or the wrong? By the right thing you shall live, by the wrong you shall die.”
“There are things that must be sought before seen, loved before understood.”
“Balance well the difference between those who worship and those who worship not; - that difference which there is in the sight of God, in all ages, between calculating, smiling, self-sustained, self governed man, and the believing, weeping, wondering, struggling, Heaven-governed man; - between the men who say in their hearts “there is no God,” and those who acknowledge a God at every step, “if haply they might feel after Him and find Him.” John Ruskin
Let our chief endeavor be to meditate upon the life of Jesus Christ.
Truly sublime words do not make a man holy and just; but a virtuous life maketh him dear to God.
Vanity of vanities! all is vanity, but to love God and serve him only.
It is therefore vanity to seek after perishing riches.
He is truly great, that is great in love.
He is truly wise, that accounteth all earthly things dung, that he may win Christ.
And he is truly learned that doth the will of God, and forsaketh his own will.
Thomas Kempis
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