From her Facebook page March 20^th, 2025.

   Words can’t convey how much I miss my precious father. Nearly every day, someone asks me “What would your father say about that?”

    More and more— daily, and on this, his 99th birthday, I realize he was far more than the amazing sum of his many and multi- faceted roles—that of husband, father of five, musician, minister, scholar, writer, college professor/ division head in Music and the Arts. Instead, he embodied a particularly precious and rare dimension—what we once called a “Renaissance Man”. Some refer to that term as one who merely masters diverse areas of complex thought. Dad, on the other hand, breathed and lived out far deeper complexities because of his overarching and unified worldview, abundantly lived out in praxis undergirded by a deeply trusting faith. He believed and lived his worldview in not just heady, intellectual dimensions, but in his rare commitment to give the fullest breadth of living to every moment of “everyday life”, often in the most disparate of relationships, situations, and environments.

     Some of this was due the unique time in which he lived- a time which summoned up rare and unique qualities of character for mere survival, much less thriving. Dad grew up on a farm in Nebraska through the Dust Bowl and Depression years, and watched, at fifteen, (the only child still at home), his Danish immigrant father drop dead of a massive heart attack while both were giving their full strength to futile attempts with the dry, much depleted soil. Dad’s father’s prevailing attitude throughout the years of pain and hardship was one of continual thanksgiving to God for the “opportunity” to live in a “land of such freedom” where he could, through hard work, own his own piece of land on which to live, worship, grow, and raise a family.

      Barely beyond processing the burial of his father and the dreaded selling of the farm, Dad began college courses at seventeen. The same Danish American father who had fought the elements all day had faithfully modeled at day’s end, after family dinner, practicing and playing his violin with blistered hands before reading/ studying the Bible. The learned habits of very difficult and sustained work, reading, studying, and practicing were well established in the only son well before his high school years. No one is surprised to know that my grandmother was a voracious reader, and, without training, could have taught a compelling and comprehensive English literature course. So the stage of his life was set.

      College having barely begun for Dad, WWII intervened, and off he went to train and later serve with the bomb group on Guam which brought the war in the Pacific to a close.

One can easily see how, with such a rich, rigorous training the young Dale found, after the war, that to be given the “opportunity” to come home and study, read, practice, and train his life for further service was a gift of unimaginable grace and proportion!

     All who knew Dad well knew he took as much keen interest in a good piece of farm machinery and any well built motor as he did his beloved music scores. He loved the rural life and had a deep love and respect for those who labored there.

     Whether at school, church, neighborhood, rehearsals, classroom-across the country, doing research on home soil or in Europe-near and far—those with whom he shared the love and beauty of music; the reality of God’s Word; those he baptized, married, counseled, shared every joy, struggle and pain— and buried- remember that he brought the same depth of love and his fullest commitment to all he did.

     Dad knew in every fiber of his being that God, Who IS LIFE ITSELF, Who gives us life, Who gave up everything to become Immanuel to/ with us; Who Himself accomplished a salvation for us all, setting us free from our personal and all humanity’s collective Adamic inner compulsive self-will and pride; Who then also freely gives us His Very Spirit with outrageous, yet trustworthy promises to guide, comfort, teach, and give us all things necessary for this life and the next—- is on the throne, and loves us with an unfathomable love.

     Dad’s zest for life was infectious! How could I be his daughter and not filled with thanksgiving, joy, amazement, and an ever-upward call— mixed with deeply missing him.

His uncle set to beautiful music John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem, “Immortal Love.” It is such an appropriate remembrance for Dr. Jorgenson, whom I was deeply blessed to call “my dad”. We loved playing this with four- hand piano, strings—or singing it together as family:( omitting several beautiful verses here).

Immortal love, forever full,

Forever flowing free,

Forever shared, forever whole,

A never ebbing sea.

In Him the first fond prayers are said,

Our lips of childhood frame;

The last, low whispers of our dead

Are burdened with His name.

Alone, O Love ineffable

Thy saving name is given;

To turn aside from thee is hell,

To walk with thee is heaven.