Carol Fernlund, 90

Carol Marie Fernlund, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, was a survivor. Born in Shanghai, China, Sept. 23, 1925, to Maria and Joseph Pavlovska, Carol was a privileged child of a white Russian refugee and an Austrian importer/exporter, for her first eight years. She passed away Oct. 6, 2015.

Life drastically changed with her father’s death in 1933. With no means of support, Carol and her mother followed friends to Hamburg, Germany, but were uncomfortable with the growing Nazi movement. A benefactor enabled them to return to Shanghai, where they settled in the French Concession in 1935. Carol, who was raised speaking her father’s German, attended a French school, where she became fluent in French. She spoke her mother’s native Russian at home. As a teen during the war years, Carol worked to help keep food on the table. One day as she delivered bakery goods during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, a bomb blew the back tire from the borrowed bike she rode. She wasn’t hurt.

At the end of the war, Carol met John Fernlund, a U.S. Merchant Marine who was on a ship that docked in Shanghai. Carol was determined to leave China, and John was a good man. She agreed to marry him in 1948 and left on the last ship allowed to leave before the communists closed Shanghai’s harbor. Her relationship with John grew into a deep mutual love that lasted 62 years, until John’s death in 2011.

As an adult, Carol mastered English, traveled the world with John, skied in the Alps, created stunning wood furniture, toys and accessories at John’s side, golfed throughout the world, and beat melanoma to live another 35 years and breast cancer to live another 11 years. She and John moved to Coeur d’Alene in 1994 to be close to their daughter and granddaughters. Carol’s determined spirit and love inspired her family.

Carol is survived by her daughters, Cynthia (Tom) Taggart of Coeur d’Alene and Sherry Short of Diamond Bar, Calif.; granddaughters Kristen Spencer of Burlington, N.C., Megan (Jim) Wolfe and Lindsay (Robert) Rutherford, both of Edmonds, Wash.; and great-grandchildren Dale and Bruce Wolfe, and Anya and Gus Rutherford of Edmonds.

Thanks to the compassionate staffs at Legends Park Assisted Living and Hospice of North Idaho’s Hospice House for helping Carol and her family through her last days.