Obituary: Alyce Louise Henninger

Alyce Louise Henninger passed to be with her husband and her Lord on July 1, 2023, at Inter-Faith Care Center in Carlton. She grew up on a dairy farm in the rural area near Nemadji, a few miles east of Barnum. Alyce attended Central School, Nemadji and Barnum High School. She went to work after high school at the Barnum Creamery. On May 27, 1949, she married Edwin Ralph Henninger, also of the Nemadji area. They attended the Brethren Church near Nemadji until it closed, and then attended the Methodist Church in Barnum, now the Barnum Community Church, where they were members until today.

Alyce and Ed had a dairy/beef cattle farm, and she worked on the farm into her early 80s, running tractors during hay season and hauling turkey manure with a gravel truck while Ed was working, and occasionally took a truckload of pulpwood to the paper mill in Cloquet. She worked in food service at the Minnesota State Hospital in Moose Lake from the early 1960s through the early '90s.

Alyce loved gardening, flowers and music. She inspired the love of music in her children. She played the accordion in her early years and frequently played for morning services at the Brethren Church. She expressed some concern prior to those performances that while playing a hymn she might slide into the "Beer Barrel Polka" ... which she never did. She spent many years working in the Barnum church kitchen and was always involved in the church's pancake breakfasts during the annual Spring Fever Days celebrations. She loved mowing lawn and could be seen even into her late 80s in her straw hat, flying around the yard on her riding mower, searching for any unsuspecting blade of grass that dared to grow too high. She loved visitors and no one came through her door without being offered coffee, sweets and conversation.

She was a tremendously kind person who had a wonderful sense of humor. She expressed this kindness and care for others in her conversations even up to the day she quietly fell asleep and passed into her eternal life with Jesus.

Alyce was preceded in death by her husband of 74 years, Edwin Ralph Henninger; daughter Barbara Holte; parents, Oscar and Sarah (Eikenbery) Peterson; brothers, Quinten (Pete), Kenneth, and Burton Peterson; sisters, Lillian Paulson, Arlene Peterson, Laura Wekseth and Iola Mraz.

She is survived by her daughter Sharon Davis; son, Loren (Karen) Henninger; grandchildren, Jason (Leina) Holte of Eagan, Jenny (Adam) Kiminski of Cloquet, Jessica Davis (Tyler Neill) of Bagley, and Michelle (Justin) Purdie of Bemidji; great-grandchildren, Tayah Holte, Brylee, Araya, Tenley, Isaac Kiminski, Seth Kleeb, Harley Fowler and Alex Neill.

A funeral service was held July 10 at Barnum Community United Methodist Church. Arrangements entrusted to Atkins Northland Funeral Home, 801 14th St., Cloquet. To sign the guestbook and leave an online tribute, see http://www.atkinsnorthlandfuneralhome.com.

Pine Knot News July 14, 2023