{"id":47520,"date":"2018-01-08T16:38:24","date_gmt":"2018-01-08T16:38:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/?p=47520"},"modified":"2018-01-08T16:38:24","modified_gmt":"2018-01-08T16:38:24","slug":"trinity-lutheran-scholarship-honors-george-sverdrup-michaelsen-31","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/2018\/01\/08\/trinity-lutheran-scholarship-honors-george-sverdrup-michaelsen-31\/","title":{"rendered":"Trinity Lutheran Scholarship honors George Sverdrup Michaelsen \u201931"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kristine\u00a0(Michaelsen) Wickens \u201973 says Trinity Lutheran Congregation and Augsburg University have been inseparable for a long time. She should know: Her family tree includes two Augsburg presidents, great grandfather\u00a0Georg Sverdrup (1876-1907) and his son, George Sverdrup (1911-1937), and five generations of Trinity members and leaders. In 1993,\u00a0Trinity celebrated its 125th<\/sup>\u00a0anniversary by creating the Trinity Lutheran Scholarship at Augsburg. The endowed scholarship also remembers life-long Trinity member George Sverdrup Michaelsen \u201931,\u00a0Kristine\u2019s father. Michaelsen, a professor of public health at the University of Minnesota, was president of Trinity,\u00a0chairman of the board of Lutheran Deaconess Hospital, and\u00a0chair\u00a0of the Augsburg Board of Regents. The scholarship fund was later augmented with an estate gift from\u00a0Michaelsen\u2019s sisters, Katherine and Else Michaelsen\u00a0\u201931.<\/p>\n

Serving immigrants since 1868<\/h4>\n

The Trinity\u2013Augsburg connection goes back to 1868, when Norwegian and Danish immigrants formed Trinity Lutheran. The congregation soon built a small wooden church at the corner of 12th<\/sup>\u00a0Avenue and 3rd<\/sup>\u00a0Street South, where US Bank Stadium now stands. Trinity leaders encouraged Augsburg Seminary to move from Wisconsin to the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood in 1872, and their collaboration led to the creation of Lutheran Deaconess Hospital in 1888. The trio of institutions became indispensible to the immigrant community, and by the 1890s Trinity had over 1,200 members. In 1897, Trinity earned the nickname, \u201cThe Mother of the Free Church,\u201d when Trinity, Augsburg and a handful of other congregations formed the Lutheran Free Church, a group of independent congregations committed to congregational autonomy and personal Christianity.<\/p>\n

\u201cHomeless congregation\u201d finds a place at Augsburg<\/h4>\n

In 1966, Trinity\u2019s 1000-seat building on 20th<\/sup>\u00a0Avenue was demolished to make way for I-94 construction. \u201cRather than disbanding,\u00a0the congregation accepted offers from Riverside Presbyterian Church and then Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church for worship and office space,\u201d explains Wickens. \u201cThere was a tremendous commitment to Cedar-Riverside, just as Augsburg has always been committed to its inner-city location and community.\u201d Augsburg began providing Trinity with\u00a0worship space in the 1990s. The two institutions and other partners host community suppers at Trinity\u2019s common space, and Augsburg students volunteer at Trinity\u2019s drop-in tutoring program for K-12 students from the neighborhood, many of whom are Muslim immigrants.<\/p>\n

Campus Connections<\/h4>\n

The lives of the Sverdrup and Michaelsen families have been intertwined with Augsburg and Trinity for five generations. \u201cThe campus was so familiar to me,\u201d remembers\u00a0Kristine, who grew up six blocks from campus. \u201cEverything we did had some kind of Augsburg or Trinity connection.\u201d She remembers visiting her grandmother, Else Sverdrup Michaelsen (Georg\u2019s daughter) who, after the death of her husband Michael Michaelsen \u2019xx continued to live on campus until her own death in 1965. Today,\u00a0Kristine\u00a0and two of her siblings, Jennifer (Michaelsen)\u00a0Windingstad\u00a0\u201967 and George Michaelsen\u00a0II, remain members of Trinity. Another sister, Mary (Michaelsen) Garmer \u201969 and\u00a0her husband Reverend Gregory Garmer \u201968 live in Duluth.\u00a0Peter Windingstad studied at Augsburg before transferring to the University of Wisconsin.\u00a0Many members of the family are donors to Augsburg.<\/p>\n

Looking back on the two institutions\u2019 shared history, Kristine\u00a0sees theirs as a story of immigration; from the Scandinavians of the 19th<\/sup>\u00a0century to the East African and other immigrants living in the Cedar-Riverside area today, and all those in between.\u00a0\u201cMy family were immigrants,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s essential that we welcome new people, include them in our lives and help them get established.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kristine\u00a0(Michaelsen) Wickens \u201973 says Trinity Lutheran Congregation and Augsburg University have been inseparable for a long time. She should know: Her family tree includes two Augsburg presidents, great grandfather\u00a0Georg Sverdrup (1876-1907) and his son, George Sverdrup (1911-1937), and five generations of Trinity members and leaders. In 1993,\u00a0Trinity celebrated its 125th\u00a0anniversary by creating the Trinity Lutheran …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":331,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4,7,6,3],"tags":[122,20,82,136,58,9,118,8,42],"class_list":["post-47520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-augsburg-fund","category-donor-recognition","category-gift-announcements","category-giving","category-giving-to-augsburg","tag-advancement","tag-alumni","tag-art-identity","tag-gift","tag-gift-announcement","tag-gift-announcements","tag-giving","tag-giving-blog","tag-planned-giving"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/331"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47520"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47522,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47520\/revisions\/47522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}