Maurna Bernadine Bancke

June 1, 1933 - September 24, 2019

Maurna Bernadine Bancke passed away on September 24, 2019. Maurna was born during the Great Depression to Oscar and Olga (Lindholm) Bjorling in Portland, Oregon on June 1, 1933. When Maurna was a year and a half old, her parents bought a farm one mile from the Redland store and school. The house was very basic but it did have electricity – many in the area did not. They had a well with a pump outside and they carried water inside with a bucket. They had a bathroom – but no fixtures, they heated water on the wood kitchen range, and bathed in a tub. Her father worked in the woods at this time and was gone for weeks at a time in logging camps leaving her mother to take care of the farm while he was gone. These were hard times but her dad always found work, they had plenty of food from the farm- veggies from the garden, eggs and chickens, milk from the cow and meat from the calves they raised. Maurna went to the Evergreen School in Redland. It was a one room schoolhouse with one teacher for 8 grades, she received a good education and even helped teach the younger kids as she grew older. Her love for reading and learning allowed her to skip the 7th grade, going from 6th grade to 8th grade and then on to attend Oregon City High School. High school was a big change from the country school, but she had no problem keeping up. She took the required classes and additional business classes; she immediately landed a good job as a secretary in Portland after graduating at seventeen years old in 1950. She later married her high school sweetheart, Harold Bancke and they started a family. According to Laura, her life-long friend from high school, Maurna caught Harold’s eye and they were inseparable from the start. Laura says Harold always watched out for Maurna and took care of her, and he truly did that throughout life until the end of their days. Maurna was a devoted wife and mother and she enjoyed gardening, cooking, sewing, camping, and road trips. She held strong to her Swedish heritage throughout her life which was evident in her cooking and homemaking style. In later years she used her self-taught computer skills to do extensive genealogy research. She thoroughly enjoyed reconnecting with her Swedish relatives here in the U.S. and visiting online with her relatives in Sweden. Her genealogy research also included the Bancke and Sanetel families; she enjoyed many Sanetel family reunions from Harold’s side of the family. Maurna is survived by her daughter Diane Bancke (husband Jim Kremer), son Kenneth Bancke (wife Carol), grandson Tim Bancke (wife Cassie), granddaughters Christina Sartain (husband Matt), and Lori Bancke, great grandchildren Lane and Gwen Bloom, Lexy Jones, Isabella and Lillian Bancke, and Paige Sartain.