11th Finglish trip August 2011 #36 Marianne Wargelin´s family traces itself to the early Astoria, Oregon Finnish fishing community, mining towns of Upper Michigan and Minnesota, the urban Finntowns of Brooklyn, New York, Worcester, Massachusetts and Waukegan, Illinois, and the industrial villages along Lake Erie. Marianne was raised within the Finnish American communities of Berkeley, California, Hancock, Michigan, and Fairport Harbor, Ohio, with Finnish as her first language

11 Finglish trip July 2011 #2 The 28th FinnFest USA was held in Town & Country Conference Center in San Diego, California in 2011. FinnFest USA was first held in 1983 in Minneapolis, Minnesota establishing the concept that the festival would travel from site to site, year by year, always creating an opportunity to provide Finnish Americans and their progeny an opportunity to meet one another and to broaden and deepen their knowledge of Finland and Finnish American history and

8th Finglish trip May 2009 #3 One of the speakers on the FinnFest USA cruise to Alaska is Don Bibeau. He’s a Finndian, as Finnish-Americans say, half Chippewa and half Finnish. His grandmother’s surname was Muhonen; she had come from Finland to North Dakota, where his mother, Lempi Mathilda, was born. The mother was in close contact with her own Finnish family. The Finnish community, however, did not accept Don Bibeau’s family, and for this reason it was only towards retireme

8th Finglish trip May 2009 #2 Sinikka Church, née Pesola, is on a FinnFest USA cruise. She came from Finland to study at the University of Wisconsin in Madison in 1959 at the age of 21. She married and had two daughters. After raising her family, Sinikka returned to teaching. In 2004 she completed a doctorate in the German language studies. Sinikka comes from Jokioinen near Forssa in South Finland. She also has relatives in Ostrobothnia. Originally having two Suomi Finland-

8th Finglish trip May 2009 #1 On May 2009 Holland America’s MS Westerdam left Seattle, Washington for a one-week cruise through Alaska’s Inside Passage. Among the 1,750 passengers aboard were 640 wearing FinnFest USA 2009 name badges. The first-ever FinnFest USA cruise marked the 200th anniversary of Finland’s establishment as a Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire. Highlights of the festival program were seminars and panels, engaging coffee conversations, mouth-watering cooking

6th Finglish trip December 2007 #10 Eric Norman Westerberg (1929-2014) was born in Detroit, MI to Swedish speaking Finns who returned to Finland when he was one year old. He went to school in Turku and served in the Finnish Military as a teenage volunteer during WWII. In 1950 he married his hometown sweetheart Benita Eklund. In 1953, the two moved to the USA after learning that Norm had dual citizenship by birth. Norm was drafted into the US Army in June 1954. After basic tra

5th Finglish trip July 2007 #14 Velma Doby nee Hakkila was born in Brule, Wisconsin in 1923, of Finnish immigrant parents active in the Finnish American cooperative movement and in community organizations. Her parents had a strawberry farm. Velma attended the Central Michigan University and Wayne State University, and graduated from the University of Minnesota. Doby has worked for the Peace Research Institute in Washington, D.C., Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, t

5th Finglish trip July 2007 #7 John and Pauline Kiltinen's hobby is to sing in a band which perform old Finnish folksongs. John has also translated the lyrics in English. John and Pauline are active in numerous Finnish-American organizations that have Copper Country connections. Their involvement isn’t limited to their local area. John served on the FinnFest USA board of directors, and both played key roles in organizing the FinnFest USA celebrations that took place in Marque

4th Finglish trip August 2006 #1 The annual, national event – FinnFest USA was held in 2006 at Naselle, Washington and Astoria, Oregon at the mouth of the Columbia River. The Finnish Folkdancers of Seattle, which has also toured in Finland, performed in authentic Finnish folk costumes. The bridge across the mouth of the Columbia River from Oregon to Washington, or vice–versa, leads over Uniontown, which used to be the Finnish area of Astoria. The haali, the present-day Suomi