LINDSBORG – People who met Ken Sjogren liked him immediately. His friends could think of no one who disliked him, even a little. If he had any fault, it’s ever a lost myth. Ken Sjogren was a man of many sides, all of them accomplished and shining. No task was too trivial, none was impossible.
Among other things, he countered a hidden effort long ago to move Bethany College to Colorado. Almost overnight he led an effort in 1967 to raise the millions needed to keep Bethany, his alma mater, in Lindsborg. That story made page one of the Los Angeles Times.
In his family Ken Sjogren was golden. He died March 21 at Riverview, a nursing home in his beloved Marquette. He had a terrible cancer and then a broken hip. He was 87.
The memorial service was on a perfect Saturday, April 2, at Salemsborg Lutheran Church. Hundreds were there, men and women and children come to say farewell. Everyone who knew Ken holds a treasure of recollections, and among mine is one frantic Monday in early March 2003 as deadlines loomed at the Lindsborg News-Record. Ken called.
I have a story for you, he said.
Hurry, I said.
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In moments he was at the office with Ken Swisher, his friend and business partner. Their story: Ken and Marilyn Sjogren had sold their half in Hemslöjd, Lindsborg’s iconic gift and novelty shop, to the Swishers, Ken and Virginia, their longtime partners. The sale capped a partnership of more than 20 years, begun with four signatures on a frayed cartoon.
On Dec. 31, 1982, they signed on a worn drawing of baby birds in a tree nest, one of the birds fluttering out, feathers flying, over the caption “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” (Later they put pens to formal papers.)
At that time, Sjogren was director of development and public affairs at Bethany College, and had been an administrator at the school since 1961.
Swisher was co-owner of a farm implement dealership in McPherson. They had been making Dala horses at home and they were popular. They decided to do this fulltime.
Ken Sjogren had finished a centennial campaign and 20-plus years at Bethany and thought it was time for something new.
“All we knew was that we were going to make little orange horses, and if it took a circus tent, we were still going to do it,” Swisher had said at the time.
They had their eyes not on a tent but on something less appealing – a beaten Standard Oil service station, three years vacant, at the northwest corner of State and Main.
In early January (’83), Swisher learned the station was available and at the right price. He committed for them all. Sjogren was out of town raising money for Bethany; while he was in California he bought half a building.
“It was a terrible place,” Sjogren had said with a grin, “in horrible shape. We loved it.”
The two Kens kept the purchase to themselves for ten months, leaving their other careers carefully, and with consideration for those with whom they had worked.
In October 1983 the News-Record declared: “Plans revealed for Standard Station site … Tourists may watch craftsmen at work …”
In March, 1984, the Sjogrens and Swishers entered the place that would be “Hemslöjd” (Swedish for home crafts); over five months they cleared the building of debris, rebuilt and remodeled. The store opened on August 4.
Over the next decade Hemslöjd started a glass etching business, doubled the size of the gift shop, launched a mail-order catalogue and imported from California a popular tourist transportation, the quadra-cycle – and created the sound system – since refurbished – that brought music outdoors through the downtown business district.
They believed in four basic elements for Hemslöjd – the gift shop, an open work shop, glass etching, and order by mail (later, online).
That and the Dalas, fundamental to the enterprise. On that March day in 2003, Ken Sjogren said that over the years he had painted 31,410 Dala horses.
In 2009, the Swishers and Sjogrens celebrated Hemslöjd’s 25th anniversary and the store was selected by public vote as one of the “8 Wonders of Kansas Commerce” in a project by the Kansas Sampler Foundation.
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In June 2011, the Swishers sold Hemslöjd to returning Lindsborg natives Corey and Denise Peterson, who had been in Topeka, where Corey was executive vice-president of the Associated General Contractors of Kansas and Denise (the former Denise Shields), a certified public accountant. The store remains magnetic and vibrant.
Hemslöjd was about risk and vision. It’s a story of two Kens when I think of one of them.
