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MASSARO: Teacher made WAVES in World War II

By Gary Massaro, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published October 6, 2007 at midnight

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COLORADO SPRINGS - Education was so important to Hazel Nilsen that she went back to college - twice.

Through her life, she was always learning, always teaching.

She died Sept. 12. She was 85.

A memorial service will be at 2 p.m. today at Atonement Lutheran Church, 6281 W. Yale Ave., Lakewood.

She was born March 30, 1922, to Charles and Gladys Ham in Caputa, S.D. She grew up on a dairy farm. She went to South Dakota Normal School to become a teacher.

"She taught in a one-room schoolhouse," said her daughter, Judy Lindholm, of Marshalltown, Iowa. "Part of the salary was keep. So she had to move from house to house and stay in the homes of students' parents."

That ended in World War II, when Mrs. Nilsen joined the WAVES. The Navy sent her to Florida to teach navigation, mostly to British pilots, Lindholm said.

After the war, she came to Colorado, studying education and music at the University of Denver on the GI Bill. She met fellow student Victor Nilsen, a Cheyenne Wells native also on the GI Bill.

"She invited him to a Sadie Hawkins dance at DU," Lindholm said.

After a four-month courtship, the couple were married June 12, 1947, in South Dakota.

Mrs. Nilsen put her full-time education on hold, staying home to raise four children, working as a bookkeeper in the Nilsen family construction business. When her children were all in school, Mrs. Nilsen returned full time to DU.

She graduated in 1954 and became a teacher at Sheridan's Petersburg Elementary School. She switched to special education.

"That was the very beginnings of what special education was. She had to do a lot of her own curriculum," Lindholm said. "As kids, we spent a lot of time over there. She wanted the kids to know what it was like to play with 'regular' kids. We'd get the kids to know their left from their right. We played board games with them."

She recruited her family to help in other ways.

"One day, mom decided she needed blocks - and right now," Lindholm said. "She enlisted everybody. Some sanded. Some painted. Our whole basement was a factory for wooden blocks."

Mrs. Nilsen returned to college to get a master's degree and finished as director of special education in Sheridan, retiring 23 years ago.

Always the teacher, Mrs. Nilsen imparted lessons to her family as well.

"The biggest thing she taught me was to look forward. She wasted no time in talking about the past," Lindholm said. "We always used to razz our parents because they always had a five-year plan."

Mrs. Nilsen and her husband bought land in Arizona and planted a pistachio orchard.

"It takes about 12 years for the trees to mature," Lindholm said.

Mr. Nilsen died in August 1996, a month before the first full harvest.

Mrs. Nilsen moved to Colorado Springs two years ago.

In addition to Lindholm, Mrs. Nilsen is survived by three other daughters, Mary Killoran, of Colorado Springs, Linda Cohn, of Englewood, and Ruth Graham, of Willcox, Ariz.; nine grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

Donations: Atonement Church, 6281 W. Yale Ave., Lakewood, CO 80227; or Alzheimer's Association, 455 Sherman St., Suite 500, Denver, CO 80203.

or 303-954-5271