Jenny (Olson) Rasmuson, co-founder of Rasmuson Foundation, was 18 when she left Sweden for America, and 21 when she stepped ashore in Yakutat in 1901 as an ordained minister of the Swedish Evangelical Mission Covenant Church. 

Her son, Elmer, remembered her as soft spoken and compassionate, a woman of deep faith who enjoyed animals, gardening, singing and playing the organ for church. Her quiet nature masked her toughness, and she stood up for what she believed. She saw the devastation of alcohol in Yakutat and became a warrior, sneaking into bootlegger’s homes to “buy” booze only to destroy it. When the family later settled in Skagway, she was so struck by the incandescent beauty of duck feathers that she made a quilt from ducks she shot herself that remains in the collection of the Skagway Museum. 

She and her family left Yakutat in 1914 for Minneapolis, where other Swedish family members had settled, and where her husband passed his first bar exam. But Jenny missed Alaska too much to stay. It was at her urging the family returned to the territory and expanded the family tradition of service to church, community and state.