Opal Thompson Harms

A memorial service for Opal Christensen Thompson Harms will be held at 2:00 p.m. Friday, June 15, 2018 at Bonnerup Funeral Service in Albert Lea, Minnesota. Visitation will be held one hour prior to the service. Pastor John Mitchem will officiate. Interment will be in Graceland Cemetery, Albert Lea.

Opal J. Harms, age 88, died on June 3, 2018 at Fairview Ridges Hospital in Burnsville, Minnesota and had been receiving care at Ebenezer Ridges Care Center. Opal was born on August 9, 1929 in Ottawa, Illinois and raised by her parents Ray and Polly (Munson) Christensen. Opal graduated from Albert Lea High School in 1947.

Following high school graduation, Opal attended the Naeve Hospital School of Nursing in Albert Lea from 1947 until 1950. She graduated in 1950 with a three-year RN degree.

In 1950 she also married Charles O. Thompson. They had two boys: Ove, born in 1953 and Daniel, born in 1956. In the mid to late 1960s Opal and Chuck divorced.

Opal lived in Rochester, MN for a while before moving to California. There she had a brief marriage to Jere Harms from 1974-1975. Around 1980 she moved to Peoria, Arizona and worked at a hospital in Sun City, Arizona. In 1984 she moved to Payson, Arizona, still involved with nursing. In 1993 she retired and moved back to Albert Lea.

In her later years, Opal discovered a passion and talent for art in the form of painting watercolor images. She also had a great fondness for pets and had a constant companion in either a dog or a cat throughout her life. Opal will be forever remembered for her quick wit and sarcastic sense of humor.

Her surviving family includes her sons, Ove Thompson (Rosamaria Peralta) of Burnsville, MN and Dan (Barbara) Thompson of Bend, OR; brother, Floyd Christensen; and several nieces and nephews. She was preceded in death by her parents, Ray and Polly Christensen; brother, Wally Munson; sisters, Milie Jensen, Charlette Otteson, LaVada Jensen; and ex-husband, Charles Thompson.