Edna Lucille (Gullickson) Irwin, Cottage Grove, died suddenly at home on September 30, 2025. The fourth of nine children born in August 1923 to Lewis and Clara Gullickson in Taylor, North Dakota. Weighing only 2 ½ pounds at birth, she thrived to live to the age of 102. She was a strong woman with an adventurous spirit and was proud of her Norwegian heritage.
Married (Thomas) Lyle Irwin, October 2, 1942, who passed in June 2015. She is survived by children Carol Jean Braswell (Roger), Marsha Garry (Gordon), and Randy Irwin (Debbie), all of Cottage Grove; sister Blanche Naumann of ND; sister-in-law Gloria Gullickson of CA; and many nieces and nephews.
Edna met Lyle when he traveled with a wheat combine team from Kansas to North Dakota. She followed him back to Kansas, where they married, and then continued to follow him to Army training camps in Louisiana and California before he was shipped to Belgium and then Germany during World War II. During that time, she worked numerous jobs, including at a Rexall Drugstore and a chicken processing plant. Her war efforts were at Hercules Powder Plant, AKA Badger Ordnance Works, in Baraboo, Wisconsin, where the fumes in her workroom were so strong they were rotated through in 15-minute shifts, and an airplane manufacturing facility in California.
Edna was best known locally for working at McDole’s Dairy Queen in Cottage Grove and Creswell for many years. She loved their customers and meeting new people. It was easy for her to start up a conversation.
Edna was also devoted to raising a family. She shared her hard work ethic with them, along with her optimism and honesty. She was an avid quilter and asked that a few pieces of fabric be put in her pockets upon departure. Request granted.
She met Ruth Wilson from Oregon while traveling on a train in California. Ruth told her they should come to Oregon when the war was over, so in 1947, after job opportunities diminished in Kansas and North Dakota, the Wilsons sent them $50 to make the trip west. They arrived in Dorena in 1947 while the reservoir was still being built and before the community of Dorena was relocated. They rented a converted chicken coop on Rat Creek Road from the Wilsons before buying Wilson’s house later, when they moved to California. The Irwins remained connected to Ruth and Doc, their children, and grandchildren to this day. Mom always said she only wanted to live on Rat Creek and in Heaven. We helped make one wish happen, and her dedication to God probably gave her success in the other.
She is buried at Willamette National Cemetery alongside her husband of 72 years.
“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, ‘Wow! What a ride!”
– Hunter S. Thompson
Arrangements are in the care of Smith-Lund-Mills Funeral Chapel.
