Soffia E. Polhemus

Soffia Polhemus, 96 of Kearney passed away Saturday, January 27, 2024 at Mother Hull Home in Kearney. Funeral services will be 10:30 a.m. Thursday, February 1, 2024 at O’Brien Straatmann Redinger Funeral Home in Kearney. Interment will follow at Kearney Cemetery. Visitation will be held one hour prior to the service at the funeral home. Soffia Elisabet Benjaminsdottir was born in Hafnarfjordur, Iceland, a small coastal community south of Reykjavik, Iceland, on February 24, 1927. Every year, when her kids were filling out the usual paperwork at school, they would have to call their Mom to remind them how to spell the town where she was raised. Not a single one of them ever pronounced it correctly because their clumsy American tongues couldn’t produce the right sounds. Her parents were Benjamin Eggertsson and Steinunn Sveinbjarnadottir. They were married, but the nomenclature in Iceland is unusual because men take the first name of their father with the “sson” suffix, and women do the same but with the suffix “dottir.” It makes genealogy a breeze. Soffia had one sister, Kristin. Iceland, to this day, is fascinating and unique, and Soffia wore that uniqueness as an intriguing cloak throughout her life. Her kids could never hear or mimic her accent like they could their dad’s, but it was with her all her life. She read and spoke three languages fluently. On July 31, 1949, she married Knud Viggo Lindhom from Aalborg, Denmark, so her knowledge of Danish was very helpful. In 1950, they made an eleven-day ocean voyage and a long overland trip to settle in Audubon, Iowa, where Knud’s uncle Holger Lindholm helped him make a start with Lindholm Lumber. Audubon was a Danish-speaking community with many immigrants like them. Soffia and Knud maintained Icelandic as their secret language when the little ears of their four children, Betty, Karl, Stan, and Anna, did not need to know things. Knud worked his way into managing the Chicago Lumber Company in Kearney, Nebraska, in 1960. On April 14, 1967, he died, leaving a young stay-at-home mom to raise four children on her own without a single relative in the country. She found her strength. Soffia was an amazing seamstress and knitter and made many special clothes for her children. She took a full-time job at First National Bank and juggled it all with razor-sharp wit, humor, toughness, optimism, and the company of two amazing friends, Wilma Helleberg and Mary Ruth Steffens. After four lonely years, on September 4, 1971, Soffia married Eugene Polhemus, a widower from Holdrege, Nebraska, and over the next forty years, they blended a family to include Eugene’s four children: Sandra, Susan, Edward, and Lee. Together, they built a house on a large acreage outside of Kearney, planted lots of trees, traveled extensively, had many adventures at home and away, and worked side by side on it all. Soffia was active in Eastern Star, Republican Women, Faith Methodist Church, and especially the quilting group at the church. In 2009, Soffia moved into town to be closer to Gene at Mount Carmel Home and how she loved her home on Avenue M. Gene died on August 25, 2013. In 2016, Soffia made one last trip to Iceland with Betty and her husband Steve, and a few weeks later, strokes made it necessary for her to move to assisted living at Northridge Retirement Home in 2017. Due to her declining health, in May of 2023, she moved to full nursing care at Mother Hull Home in Kearney, where she was cared for so tenderly until she died on January 27, 2024. Soffia was preceded in death by her parents, her husband Knud, her husband Eugene, her sister Kristin, sons Edward, Lee, and Karl, her daughter Sandra, grandson Benjamin, and her favorite friend Duke, her beloved Golden Retriever. She leaves to cherish her memory daughter Betty Streff and husband Steve of Kearney, daughter-in-law Angela Lindholm of Omaha, son Stan Lindholm and wife Carol of Wellington, Ohio, daughter Anna Midkiff of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, daughter Susan McAdam and husband John of Omaha, daughter-in-law Vicki Polhemus of Kearney, eleven grandchildren and sixteen great-grandchildren. Memorials are suggested to the family to be designated at a later date. Condolence may be shared online at www.osrfh.com. Services are entrusted to O’Brien Straatmann Redinger Funeral and Cremation Services.

Soffia E. Polhemus

February 24, 1927 - January 27, 2024