{"id":61054,"date":"2026-10-27T09:53:30","date_gmt":"2026-10-27T14:53:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/trfnews.i234.me\/wordpress\/?p=61054"},"modified":"2026-10-27T06:00:03","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T11:00:03","slug":"fern-m-ornquist-90","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trfnews.i234.me\/wordpress\/fern-m-ornquist-90\/","title":{"rendered":"Fern M. Ornquist, 90"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Red Wing \u2013 Fern M. Ornquist, 90, passed away peacefully on Monday, October 19, 2026 in Red Wing.<br \/>\nFern was born on February 21, 1936 in Middle River to Glen and Fannie (Morehouse) Curtiss. She remained in Middle River through high school, graduating in the spring of 1954. Within the year, she was united in marriage to Dean Ornquist.<br \/>\nFamily and community were the fire of Fern\u2019s heart and Middle River was her home. By 1965, she was raising three boys in the very town that raised her. Fern and Dean supported their family by running many different businesses throughout the years. They owned and operated a car sales lot, a logging company, a pallet recycling outfit, storage units and Spruce Valley Nursery where they raised and sold trees for the community. Despite having plenty of work at home, Fern needed more \u2018people time,\u2019 so she picked up shifts in town. She worked in the school cafeteria, taught Sunday school, called bingo and ran billing for Middle River\u2019s newspaper, \u201cThe Honker,\u201d among many other things.<br \/>\nFern was gifted with people. She knew how to make someone feel special even on the worst of days. With a cup of coffee in hand, she was an open ear and a safe person to confide in. She was full of wisdom, integrity, kindness, humor and grit. She cherished her people and remained close with her siblings through adulthood, nurtured many close friendships, raised her children with love and never missed an opportunity to gather the family for a card game, dinner and holidays. Fern was very proud of her children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and the life she had lived.<br \/>\nShe will be missed by many, including her sons; Dwight, Bryan (Janice), and Dexter (Jenny) Ornquist; nine grandchildren, Micah, Dani, Chris, Jeremiah, Jordan, Ben, Kaila, Collan, and Wren; several great grandchildren; and her siblings, Linda (Keith) Gram, Gloria (Curt) Barber, and Gordon (Kay) Curtiss.<br \/>\nShe is preceded in death by her husband of nearly 60 years, Dean; siblings, Joy (Omar) Thompson and Gladys (Wallace) Nelson; her parents, Glen and Fan (Morehouse) Curtiss; two great-grandchildren; several in-laws; nieces; nephews; and very close friends.<br \/>\nA gathering of family and friends will be held at the Spruce Valley Community Center, 250 Hill Avenue South, Middle River, MN 56737 on Saturday, November 14, 2026 from 1-3 p.m.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Red Wing \u2013 Fern M. Ornquist, 90, passed away peacefully on Monday, October 19, 2026 in Red Wing. Fern was born on February 21, 1936 in Middle River to Glen and Fannie (Morehouse) Curtiss. She remained in Middle River through high school, graduating in the spring of 1954. Within the year, she was united in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":61055,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_wpscp_schedule_draft_date":"","_wpscp_schedule_republish_date":"","_wpscppro_advance_schedule":false,"_wpscppro_advance_schedule_date":"","_wpscppro_dont_share_socialmedia":false,"_wpscppro_custom_social_share_image":0,"_facebook_share_type":"","_twitter_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type":"","_pinterest_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type_page":"","_instagram_share_type":"","_medium_share_type":"","_threads_share_type":"","_bluesky_share_type":"","_mastodon_share_type":"","_google_business_share_type":"","_selected_social_profile":[],"_wpsp_enable_custom_social_template":false,"_wpsp_social_scheduling":{"enabled":false,"datetime":null,"platforms":[],"status":"template_only","dateOption":"","timeOption":"","customDays":"","customHours":"","customDate":"","customTime":"","schedulingType":""},"_wpsp_active_default_template":true},"categories":[15],"tags":[827,29040,2234,3028,29041,10702,824,825,1862,569],"class_list":["post-61054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-obits","tag-falls","tag-fern","tag-northern","tag-official","tag-ornquist","tag-page","tag-river","tag-thief","tag-times","tag-watch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trfnews.i234.me\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trfnews.i234.me\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trfnews.i234.me\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trfnews.i234.me\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trfnews.i234.me\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61054"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trfnews.i234.me\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61141,"href":"https:\/\/trfnews.i234.me\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61054\/revisions\/61141"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trfnews.i234.me\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trfnews.i234.me\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trfnews.i234.me\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trfnews.i234.me\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}