Irving Ringdahl
Irving Clayton Ringdahl, 92, passed away peacefully on October 24, 2016 at McKee Hospital in Loveland, CO. He was born in McVille, North Dakota on March 7, 1924. The oldest of Dorothy and Henry Ringdahl’s 10 children, from an early age he was known to be hard-working, kind, patient, humble, and a gifted learner. Growing up on his family’s farm during the Great Depression, Irving always said he felt lucky because sleeping on a cot in the hall made him feel “as if I had a room all to myself.”
Irving farmed until he was 23-years-old when the loss of a bumper crop to an early fall hailstorm prompted him to leave the field and move to Minneapolis. Despite his 10th grade education, the president of Augsburg College allowed him to take an entrance exam, and he began his classes the fall of 1948. Irving met fellow Auggie Almina Nelson at an impromptu college tobogganing party in January 1950. They married on December 17, 1950 and the rest is history; four children were born in four years, Irving completed medical school in 1957, and Almina and Irving worked together as a nurse and doctor team for the next 10 years.
Throughout his life, Irving demonstrated a unique gift for supporting, caring for, and inspiring others. He worked as a family practice doctor in rural Iowa for 10 years before returning to school at the age of 43 to complete his residency in child psychiatry. In 1972 Almina and Irving moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, where he founded the Child Psychiatry Residency Program and Inpatient Child Psychiatry department at the University of Arkansas Medical Center.
After retiring in 1989, Irving and Almina relocated to Colorado where he continued to work as a locum tenen psychiatrist in several states until he was 80 years old.
In 2012, the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in Little Rock created an award in his honor to recognize faculty members who demonstrated some of Irving’s most outstanding qualities: a dedication to teaching, clinical excellence, and high ethical standards.
The world is a better place because Irving Ringdahl was in it. He lived a full life and he cared deeply for those around him. He loved all kinds of music, read voraciously, introduced North Dakota rhubarb to every place he lived and possessed a special appreciation for ice cream and lutefisk. Irving was a dedicated Lutheran throughout his life, participating in ECLA congregations everywhere he lived. Faith Community Lutheran church and the Good Samaritan community were his most recent spiritual homes.
He was loved and will be fondly remembered by his wife, Almina; siblings, Dolores, Helen, Bob, Phil, Barb; his four children, Paul, Naomi, Debbie, Mark and their spouses Sally,Jim, Roger, Chris; 11 grandchildren, Elizabeth, Greg, Joe, Ella, Nat, Kate, Suzy, Signe, Erik, Anders, Beck; and 7 great-grand children, Caleb, Emmet, Gwendolyn, Erik, Lucas, Arthur, Finley.
A memorial service was held Saturday, December 17, 2016, at 11 a.m. at Faith Community Lutheran Church, Longmont, CO.
