Cecelia Nistler

Cecelia Margaret Nistler, a trail-blazing professional woman and much-loved mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and wife, reached the end of her long and full life on September 22, with her daughters and son by her bedside.

Born in 1934, Ceil, as she was known, grew up in two small towns in Minnesota, Federal Dam and Oklee, where she was raised by devoted parents alongside five brothers and sisters that she adored.

Ambitious and adventurous, she moved to Minneapolis shortly after graduating from high school. After a year spent studying to become a legal secretary at the Minnesota Business College, she went to work at a prominent Minneapolis law firm. She also started a family, marrying Thomas Krattenmaker, with whom she had three children in quick succession: Kathleen, Deborah, and Thomas. Though her marriage ended early, Ceil was determined to provide a good life for herself and her young family.

Despite a tight budget and long hours at the office to pick up overtime pay, she found ways to bring fun into her kids’ childhood, introducing them to the joys of nature, sledding, skating, and, later, skiing, and taking them on drives around town to admire lilacs in the spring and fancy houses in the lake area. They learned from her the importance of education, hard work, resourcefulness, and perseverance, but also how to enjoy life.

She also managed a few longer trips, including a week at a dude ranch in the Colorado mountains. To save money on the drive, Ceil and her kids slept in the station wagon and stopped to eat along the roadside. In an incident that became part of family lore, on one such stop the Spam squirted out of the can and rolled down the hill into a stream, but after a quick cleaning to get off the dirt and pine needles, was eaten anyway.

Perhaps because she grew up in prairie land, Ceil loved the mountains—an appreciation she passed on to her children and grandchildren. And mountains were an apt symbol of a career in which she was always climbing higher.

At the law firm, Ceil kept taking on more challenging roles and learned to accomplish them with aplomb. Her role and work were eventually elevated and codified into a job title commonly heard today but unknown at the time: paralegal (a Chicago news crew was sent to Minneapolis to film her in this novel new position). After several years serving in that capacity at the law firm, she struck out on her own, starting her own successful paralegal practice in downtown Minneapolis. But in 1977, with her children beginning to fly the nest, she followed the lure of adventure and romance to the San Jose area. California would be her home for more than 40 years.

In California, Ceil worked in insurance and financial planning and then became a real estate investor. A few years into her California chapter she met another transplanted Minnesotan, Arthur Daline. Married in 1985, they would spend many happy years together, in both life and running a successful business.

As they got older, Ceil and Art found time to travel, taking trips around the world—the Sierra Nevada mountains, Alaska, the Baltic Sea, Ireland, Portugal, and elsewhere—and spending time with siblings, adult children, and growing numbers of grandchildren and great-grandchildren in Minnesota and on the east and west coasts. She also loved taking her grandchildren on special trips.

Avid golfers, she and Art eventually moved to a house on a golf course in Brentwood, California. Ceil became an accomplished oil painter, creating dozens of paintings destined for her walls and the homes of her children and relatives.

In their later years, illness compelled Ceil and Art to move back to their home state for care. They both reached the end of their lives, just five months apart, at the Lilac Homes memory care and hospice facility in Moorhead, close to Ceil’s daughter Debbie.

Ceil is preceded in death by her parents, three brothers, and one sister, and her husband and longtime companion, Arthur Daline. She is survived by her children, Kathleen Krattenmaker and her husband, Michael McGettigan; Deborah Forsberg and her husband, Daniel Forsberg; and Tom Krattenmaker and his wife, Carolyn Gretton; by her stepdaughter, Angela Swenson; by five grandchildren, Katie, Jeanne, Diana, Holland, and Andrew; by three step-grandchildren, Fritjof, Cleo, and Axel; and by 11 great-grandchildren.

Ceil lives on in the loving memory and appreciation of all who knew her, and in the inspiring example she set for them.

A Celebration of Life service will be Saturday, October 26, 2024, at 11 AM, in Korsmo Funeral and Cremation Service, Moorhead.