Hazel Adele Benson Nelson, a sweet-tempered advocate of health foods and
healthy living, died at her senior village apartment Friday night, age 93.

Son Paul Nelson said she was sleeping when she stopped breathing. She left
wishes not to be resuscitated.

In recent months, Nelson¹s apartment was busy with caregivers. As many as a
dozen friends stopped in daily to visit and read to her, everything from
Robert Service poems to newspapers.

Nelson never owned a television, but she listened to two radios, one tuned
to community radio KHNS, the other to Christian radio KRSA. Her body failed,
but her mind remained active. "It was like a community command center in
there. She was so sharp, she didn¹t miss a thing," said friend Becky Nash.

Nelson and late husband Louis moved to Haines in 1966. When she was 59, they
gained title to a 160-acre homestead at 7 Mile Mud Bay Road that had been
staked but never proved up on in five previous attempts.

They grew barley and oats and raised chickens and goats while she tended a
large, organic garden. "We never ate white bread, white sugar or processed
food of any kind," said daughter Ardis Nelson.

Nelson didn¹t drink alcohol or coffee, preferring herbal teas and spring
water, but friend Edna Hales credited her longevity to a cheerful and kind
outlook. "I feel her attitude played a bigger part. She enjoyed people. She
didn¹t complain. Every day she¹d wake up and look out the window and say,
?Isn¹t it a wonderful day?¹"

Nelson enjoyed socializing and was a regular at community gatherings from
concerts to birthday parties in her bright-patterned recycled clothes, often
layering long flowered dresses over pants and sweaters. She typically made
the rounds with her best friend, the late Louise Holmstad. "There¹s probably
a potluck in heaven right now they¹re getting together at," said Nash.

Nelson was a member of the Presbyterian Church, Salvation Army Home League,
Haines Woman¹s Club and Lynn Canal Conservation. Active in the Southeast
Alaska State Fair, she entered exhibits in art, creative writing, preserved
foods, gardening and wild food divisions.

She also organized the recycled crafts booth and made useful and ornamental
items, like vases from plastic pop bottles and doormats from woven plastic
grocery bags.

Nelson was born on a farm near Hudson, S.D. to Joseph Gottfried Bengtsson, a
Swede who later changed the family name to Benson, and Antje Tuynman, from
Holland. She was raised on a farm in Hawarden, Iowa.

She attended a one-room schoolhouse where her sister was teacher, played the
saxophone and was valedictorian at Hawarden High School. She attended Iowa
State Teachers¹ College where she played in the band and met her future
husband, French horn player Louis Nelson.

She taught primary school for several years before they married in Wolcott,
N.Y. in May of 1940 after her husband graduated from the Eastman College of
Music in Rochester. She earned a degree in elementary education at Iowa
State Teachers¹ College, took graduate-level classes at Oswego College and
also studied at the Eastman School of Music.

After the war, the family traveled, moving often due to Louis Nelson¹s work
selling the Nelson Tester, a device that tests the electrical insulation of
automobiles.

They lived in Iowa and later upstate New York, where Nelson was a homemaker
and a 4-H club leader and campaigned for environmental causes, including
convincing a dairy to use cardboard cartons rather than plastic milk jugs.

In addition to her parents and husband, Nelson is preceded in death by
sisters Gladys Treiber and Lois Harker, brother Raymond Benson, and grandson
Alexander Fader. She is survived by children Ardis Nelson, Johnson City,
Tenn., Carol Tuynman, Beaufort, S.C., Irene Nelson of Juneau, and Paul
Nelson of Haines; sister Agnes Cable Creamer of Chamberlain, S.D., four
grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.

A celebration of her life was held Tuesday at the Presbyterian Church.
Memorial gifts may be made to Hospice of Haines, P.O. Box 1034, Haines AK
99827.