TRINITY LUTHERAN CHURCH · WILLOW FORK, NEBRASKA
A Service of Thanksgiving for the Life of
The Rev. Harold J. Sievers
March 3, 1921 – June 15, 1999
Pastor of Trinity, 1953–1991
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Prelude
Dear friends,
For two years I have kept this little page on the Internet for our congregation, with the
service times and the council minutes and the Ladies Aid pie sale. I never thought I would use it
for this. But so many of you have written from away — kids who grew up here and moved to
Omaha and Denver and Phoenix, and families Pastor married or buried or baptized, some of them
fifty years ago — wanting to know about the funeral, that I have put it all here, set up
the way he liked a bulletin: plain, in order, and not too long.
I was church secretary under Pastor for his last eighteen years, and for the eight since under
Pastor Ostlund, who has been very kind to let me do this. My husband Wendell and I ranch north of
town. Pastor baptized all three of our kids and married two of them. I suppose that's how most of
us knew him.
— Joanne Riedel
His Life
Harold John Sievers was born on a wheat farm in Marion County, Kansas, the fourth of seven
children, and grew up speaking German at home and English at school. He served in the Army in
Europe during the war, and he said the war was where he decided to become a pastor, but he
never would say much more about it than that.
He graduated from Wartburg Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa, in 1950, married Edna Schroeder, a farm girl from
northern Iowa, the same summer, and served three years in a small parish in Iowa before the call came from
Trinity in 1953. Edna told me once they looked at a map, found Willow Fork, looked at each other,
and said, well, somebody has to. They came out in a 1949 Chevrolet with a baby, a crib and a
box of books, and stayed for the rest of their lives.
He served Trinity for thirty-eight years. When he retired in 1991 he moved two blocks from the
parsonage and kept right on visiting the sick and filling in whenever he was asked. Edna went to
be with the Lord in 1994. Pastor died peacefully at the hospital in North Platte on Tuesday, June 15,
with his children around him. He is survived by his four children, eleven grandchildren, three
great-grandchildren, and by a whole county.
From the Parish Register, 1953–1991
| Children and adults baptized | 371 |
| Young people confirmed | 296 |
| Couples married | 188 |
| Brothers and sisters laid to rest | 312 |
| Sundays he missed (that anyone can remember) | 4 |
I counted these out of the old register books in the church office. The four Sundays were three blizzards and his gallbladder.
What We Remember
The pickup. He drove a green Ford pickup to hospital calls, eighty miles each way to North
Platte, sometimes three times a week, and he wore out three of them. He said a pastor who wouldn't
drive eighty miles to hold a hand ought to find another line of work.
The brandings. Every spring he came out to the brandings in his old boots and helped wrestle
calves until he was nearly seventy, and then he said the blessing over the dinner. The ranchers
always said he was worth two hired men and a prayer.
The butterscotch. He kept his coat pocket full of butterscotch candies, and every child in the
congregation knew it. After service there would be a line of little ones at the door. Some of those
little ones are grandparents now and still say they can't smell butterscotch without thinking of
him.
The sermons. Never more than fifteen minutes. He said after fifteen minutes the Holy Spirit
and the pot roast both start to suffer.
The blizzard of '75. In January of 1975, in the big blizzard, when the roads were closed for
days, he rode along with the county road crew on the plow to reach the Hofmeister place, where old
Mrs. Hofmeister was dying, so that she would not be alone. He stayed two days until she was gone,
and then he helped Walt feed the cattle.
His verse. Micah 6:8. He preached on it at least once a year, and he lived it every day.
Look it up. That was him.
The Order of Service
Saturday, June 19, 1999, 10:30 a.m., Trinity Lutheran Church
| Prelude | Mrs. Doris Kohl, organist |
| Hymn | Children of the Heavenly Father |
| Readings | Psalm 121 · Micah 6:6-8 · John 14:1-6 |
| Remembrances | Paul Sievers, his son
Lloyd Brunk, for the congregation |
| Hymn | Abide with Me |
| Sermon | Pastor Gary Ostlund (fourteen minutes; we timed it) |
| Hymn | Beautiful Savior |
| Committal | Trinity cemetery, on the hill, next to Edna |
| Postlude | A Mighty Fortress Is Our God |
The church seats two hundred. About five hundred came. The men stood outside along the fence with
the windows open, the way they did for weddings in the old days. The Ladies Aid served lunch in
the basement afterward: ham buns, scalloped potatoes, three kinds of Jell-O salad and twenty-two
pies, and we ran out of nothing. He would have been pleased about that.
A Litany of Thanks
I wrote this for the women's circle meeting in July. We read it responsively. You are welcome to use it.
For the green pickup at the hospital door at midnight,
we give you thanks, O Lord.
For the hand on the shoulder at the graveside in the wind,
we give you thanks, O Lord.
For butterscotch, and boots, and fifteen minutes,
we give you thanks, O Lord.
For every name he wrote into the big book in his careful hand,
the babies, the brides, the old ones going home,
we give you thanks, O Lord.
For a man who looked at a map and said, well, somebody has to,
and came, and stayed,
we give you thanks, O Lord.
And now that he rests on the hill where he laid so many,
keep us fair in our dealings, kind to one another, and humble before you,
until we see him again.
Amen.
Memorials
The family asks that memorials go to the Pastor Sievers Camp Fund, which will send Trinity young
people to Bible camp each summer, something he did out of his own pocket for years without telling
anybody. As of Sunday we have $6,840 and a promise from the Hofmeister family to match whatever we
raise by Christmas. E-mail me and I will send you where to mail it. Cards for the family can come
to the church too, and I'll see they get them.
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