Kenneth Laurel Sterndahl (1931-1997)

b.   3 March 1931     Santa Monica, California
m.  28 March 1951   Las Vegas, Nevada
d.   30 November 1997   Coos Bay, Oregon

Father:    Laurel Ernest Sterndahl
Mother:   Mary Alta Wilkins

Wife:  Peggy Sharon Adams (Sharon)

Children:   Kathleen Laurel Sterndahl (Kathy)
                Dennis Scott Sterndahl (Chip)
                Nicole Lynne Sterndahl (Nicki)

one year?

2-3 years old?

July, 1938 - 7 years old

Ken, 9-10 years old? and Dennis 4-5 years old?

June, 1940 - Ken, 9 yrs., mother Alta, brother Dennis, 3 yrs., father Laurel (died that Sept.)

Dennis and Ken (1949-50?)

Ken and Sharon - 1950?

1954 or 1955  - Sharon, Nicki - 1 year?, Kathy - 3 years, Ken, Chip - 2 years?

1996? 1997?

Ken's father died suddenly of Infantile Paralysis (Polio) when he was just nine years old. Two years later, his mother married his father's brother, Merrill Frithiof Sterndahl. Merrill (Mel) became the man Ken thought of as his father, and he was the only grandfather that Ken's children knew.

Ken attended Benjamin Franklin Elementary School, Eleanor J. Toll Junior High School, and Herbert Hoover High School, all in Glendale, California.

He joined the U.S. Naval Reserves on his seventeenth birthday in 1948 and was discharged honorably on March 2, 1953. 

From July, 1949 through August, 1950, he worked as a carpenter's apprentice for Quinn & Conant in Los Angeles, earning $62.00 per week. 

Ken and Sharon were married before a Justice of the Peace in Las Vegas, Nevada. Both sets of parents attended the wedding. 

About 1955, he moved the family to June Lake, California, with the dream of working as a carpenter and fishing in his spare time. The family lived in a tiny cabin, the three kids sleeping sideways across a double bed in the only bedroom, while Ken and Sharon slept in another double bed in the living room/kitchen. He caught a lot of fish that summer in Grant Lake and June Lake, but there was no carpentry work in the winter, so they moved back to Glendale.

For much of his adult life, Ken worked in aluminum dip brazing. In 1975, he quit that work, and they bought an 8.3 acre farm near Visalia, California. They raised a few cows, a few goats, a few sheep and pigs, along with chickens, ducks, pheasants, etc. When Chip started Sterndahl Enterprises, Ken and Sharon moved back to the San Fernando Valley to be a part of the company. Ken did some beautiful woodworking, and it seemed like he could build or fix just about anything. Everything was always done with perfection!

When Ken and Sharon retired in 1991, they bought a motorhome and traveled around the country before settling in Reedsport, Oregon. He spent as much time as possible fishing the rivers and into the ocean.