Milda Iversen, 60, who owned a South Side beauty salon in the 1960s, died Wednesday, June 26, of a heart attack and complications from cancer in Community Hospital in Munster, Ind. Mrs. Iversen was born during the early years of World War II in Lithuania, then occupied by Russia. To escape Russian rule, Mrs. Iversen’s family traveled to Germany. Along the way, the family lost its possessions in a bombing. Eventually they settled in a displaced persons camp in Germany until they moved to Chicago in 1948. Mrs. Iversen’s father bought a farm in Antioch where Mrs. Iversen grew up, milking cows twice a day and husking corn–a task she loathed because it would dry her hands. “To this day, she didn’t want anything to do with corn on the cob,” said her husband, Tarvis. When her dreams to become a nurse were quelled by her parents, Mrs. Iversen decided to attend beauty school after graduating from high school. She bought Longwood Beauty Salon on 95th Street near Western Avenue. For 10 years, Mrs. Iversen “worked seven days a week to accommodate” her clients, said her husband, whom she married in 1968. Shortly after her son was born the following year, Mrs. Iversen sold the beauty shop to raise him and her other son. “Her main thing in life was she always said her boys had to get a college education” because she never had one, her husband said. She went back to work in the late 1980s at the Star Deli in Munster and worked there for 12 years. Mrs. Iversen lived in Lansing for the last 30 years. Besides her husband, survivors include two sons, Erik and Kristoffer; three brothers, George, Stanley and Peter; and a sister, Maryanne Kuzmickas. A service will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday in Schroeder-Lauer Funeral Home, 3227 Ridge Rd., Lansing.
