Elaine D. (Westlund) Coleman

Elaine Dorothy [Westlund] Coleman of Cambridge, MN passed away peacefully at Ecumen North Branch on Saturday, June 17, 2023.  She was 95 years old. Elaine is dearly loved and will be dearly missed.

She was born during a snowstorm on February 28, 1928, at home in Mason, WI to John J. Westlund and Mildred [Johnson] Westlund. Entering the world with the same quiet capability that characterized her life, she arrived by the hands of a local midwife while the doctor and her father were still en route. She attended a one-room school as a child in Wisconsin, rode streetcars to listen to music downtown as a teen in Chicago from 1942-1944, and graduated from Atwater High School in Atwater, MN in 1946.

Elaine attended Bethel Junior College in St. Paul, MN and graduated from Mounds-Midway School of Nursing (St. Paul, MN) in 1950. Entering a course in Public Health Nursing at the University of Minnesota in 1952, she completed practical experience in Santa Fe, NM before graduating two years later—and she never forgot the solo road trip she took to get there.

In 1954, Elaine married Thomas P. Coleman, a young doctor who had graduated the year before from the University of Minnesota. And 1956 they took their first baby and combined medical training to Ethiopia to share their Christian faith under the support of the Baptist General Conference (now called Converge).

Elaine had never enjoyed being in the public eye and preferred to let her husband Tom take center stage, but from the beginning she was an equal partner in all they did, even when her work kept her farther behind the scenes. It was often Elaine who, along with her regular nursing duties, stepped in to take care of the jobs that needed to be done, always displaying a quiet confidence that came from knowing it didn’t matter what she did as long as it was within the Lord’s will for her at that time. She handled the sorting and organization of hospital inventory with the same dignity as she had when training both public health and operating room nurses, and she manned the radio to give “MAF” aircraft their weather reports with the same diligence that she used when partnering with architects and builders to design new operating rooms and surgical wards.

Elaine did sewing for medical clinics, oversaw infection control for patients, wrote teaching materials, and spent two years as principal of a local elementary school. She managed office and accounting duties for the hospitals where she and Tom worked, assisted the kitchen workers at a leprosarium, and even went so far as to read out birthing instructions from a veterinary book while a calf was being delivered so those helping knew what to do. Wherever there was a need, there was Elaine, ready to meet it with a smile on her face and her God at her back.

For nineteen years in Ethiopia and sixteen in Cameroon, Elaine gave all of herself to the people and the work around her as a reflection of her steady faith that God, through Christ, gave all of Himself for her. Like Martha of the Christian Bible, she poured out her love by taking care of the people in her life as best she could, and like Martha’s sister Mary, she poured herself into studying and taking to heart the words of Jesus as recorded in Scripture.

And when retirement brought Tom and Elaine back to Cambridge, MN, Elaine didn’t stop. She willingly volunteered in many areas around the community, including her church (First Baptist Cambridge), the Isanti County Historical Society, and Meals on Wheels, and she and Tom made time every year to visit their daughter, son and families across the US. Whether in Gendeberet, Banso, or Cambridge, her servant’s heart has always shone brightly for all to see.

Elaine entered the long term care unit at Ecumen North Branch in the spring of 2017, meeting the new challenge with the warmth of her smile, her good humor, and an unshakeable faith in the goodness of God. Back in the green house on Maple Dell Road, she left behind boxes of photographs already captioned for when she could no longer tell their stories and a multitude of household items neatly labeled “TPC.” Family and friends chuckled whenever the label showed up, but for the next three years, the man who owned those initials visited her as often as he could to sit at her side, hold her hand, and call her his queen.

Those who have preceded Elaine in death include her husband Tom; her parents, John and Mildred Westlund; her son Eric; her son-in-law John Peterson; her brothers David Westlund and Roger Westlund; and her sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law Pauline Westlund, James Coleman, Jane Jensen, Donald Coleman, and Marion Anderson.

Elaine leaves behind her children, Judy Peterson of Cambridge, MN, and Bill Coleman (Susan Mazze) of Redondo Beach, CA; her six grandchildren and one step-granddaughter and their spouses; five great-grandchildren, and one step-great-grandson. She is also survived by her sisters-in-law Phyllis Westlund and Arlene Coleman, as well as many nieces, nephews, and other relatives and friends.

Memorial Service 2PM, Saturday, August 19, 2023 at First Baptist Church in Cambridge.  Visitation one hour prior to the service.  Private interment in Springvale Baptist Cemetery.

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