Jussi K. and Olga S. Kangas papers

Olga Sofia Johansson (in her twenties) and Jussie Knute Kangas met at the Work People's college in the 1920s. The school was located at Smithville, a Duluth neighborhood, where Jussi Kangas was employed as a bookkeeping teacher.

Before Olga was two years old, her father, Enoch Johansson, left his wife and children and fled Finland for Sweden and then Canada to evade a four year prison term. Olga and her siblings were placed in an orphanage after they were found abandoned - or alone - in "a shack" while their mother, Eva Johansson, was working in a factory.

Details of Olga's childhood before and after the orphanage period are not known. Olga lived in Helsinki with her brother Vilho Johansson where she attended school through ninth grade and was subsequently employed by an island truck-gardening firm. During the Finnish civil war she worked as a nurses aide on a hospital train, but was captured by the “whites” and marched to a concentration camp where she nearly starved. She was paroled "after some months" and found work in a coffee shop. Her eldest sister, Hilja, emigrated to America from where she encouraged Olga to join herself and her husband. Olga's parents purchased her steamship ticket for America in 1920, and she reached Ellis Island when she was 20 years old. It is not known when she reached Duluth, but she was employed as a hotel maid at Hotel Lenox in Duluth's downtown. She found a community in the Finnish American Athletic Club and Work People's College participating in theatrics, choral performances, and reading pacifist poetry.

After several years Olga met and married Jussi Kangas who was teaching bookkeeping at the Work People's College (Tyovaen Opisto 1904-1940) a Finnish Folk School. During these years she wrote articles for the Industrialisti, the IWW newspaper in Finnish.

Jussi Kangas (born August 16, 1896), had several years of education at Valparaiso University in Indiana becoming an auditor for the Co-operative Movement in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Jussi and Olga Kangas parents made a trip to Finland "to transport a draft-dodger to a jail cell in his homeland". Their son, John, was born about a year later, on December 26, 1930. Jussi died at age 36 in 1932 of scarlet fever and pneumonia when the baby, John Omar Kangas, was about 18 months old.

Olga cared for her sister and her sister's twins, and she returned to work as a maid in Duluth. Olga "was fired and blacklisted in Duluth for union organizing activities" and moved to Cromwell, Minnesota just south of Duluth, to work in a Co-op store. She was a reporter for the Co-op Builder and Osuustoiminta Lehti publications.

Olga met her second husband, Charles Alexander Hill, (born March 6, 1897), who was the manager of the Cromwell Co-op Garage. They married in 1941, and the three years, relocated to Kettle River, Minnesota where Charlie worked as a powerhouse operator at KR REA. Olga's mother, Eva Gustava Helsted Johansson (1858-April 1948) and one sister lived with them.

Olga and Charlie moved to Lake Worth, Florida near the Finnish-American Hall (Kenta Iiaali) when Charlie retired. Charlie died August 23, 1977. Olga died September 16, 2000, at a Finnish-American rest home in Lake Worth, Florida.

The Kangases biographical information was supplied by their son, John O. Kangas.