Dedicated to my cousin, BJ

My Danish cousin, Bjarne "BJ"

Hello Family,

It has been a long time since I posted on my "Uncle Louie's Letters To Home" blog.  Well three years, can you believe it?  Recently, my dear cousin of mine passed away last November.  We connected six years ago back in 2012.  It was quite the thrill for my daughter Nyssa and I when we first connected with BJ and his cousin Nina.  We were working on my family tree and I had very little to go with on my Thomsen line.  That all changed when we connected with BJ and Nina on the Ancestry forum.  With the help of Nina and later another dear cousin, Pattie (and sadly missed) our Danish tree grew!

After awhile we drifted from the genealogy and BJ helped translate all my Danish letters I had.  I am forever grateful for that and what a learning experience it was!  Then I started posting the letters from my Uncle Louie that he wrote to home during WWII under the encouragment of BJ.  BJ was my Dad's and Uncle Louie's first cousin.  A cousin they never knew they had and cousins that BJ never knew he had.  BJ really enjoyed reading those letters.

So that being said, I dedicate the rest of the letters to my cousin BJ.

I also want to share the first email I received from BJ back in February 2012, six years ago.  The excitement of acknowledging our connection.  The subject line he wrote:  "We are family!"

Finally, his obituary wonderfully written to give you an idea of who BJ was.

Love to all,

Cindy

We are family!  First letter from BJ  2/11/2012

Dear Cindy & Nyssa,

This a dream come true! As a child growing up in Denmark I was told that "some" of my father's (Holger) brothers immigrated to America "many years ago". Little did I know then that many years later (1979) I would follow in their footsteps and become an American citizen and so my son Skipp born here in Portland in 1982. 

Thanks for the pics. My father, Holger, appears in many of them. The young couple with the baby girl are my parents, Holger & Grethe with my older sister Lis who sadly passed in 1989 from breast cancer. The hand written letter is from my father presumably to his 12 years older brother, Lauritz in the US. The two young women are my aunts Alma & Marie. 

The Thomsen family as you know was large with 7? children spaced over 17 years. I can only remember my father's youngest siblings: Johan, Alma & Marie. My father was close to the last two. Otherwise I don't know/remember much about my father's family also because I left Denmark in 1967, 22 years old like Lauritz. I lived the next 12 years in SE Asia and Africa and came to the US in 1979 and as you can see never left. During those years I visited my Danish family occasionally. Today I have regular contacts with two cousins on my mother's side. One, Nina, is like you into genealogy and has worked on it for many years. She has traced the family on my mother's side back to the 1600s. Nina has helped me on the Thomsen side and led me to the Nyssa correspondence from 2009 on ancestry.com I discovered yesterday. Last summer I visited Denmark with my son for the first time in 16 years. I drove to Hadsund trying to dig up some Thomsen family history. Not very successful until I got Nina involved. 

I understand you have quite a few Thomsen family documents. I would love to meet with you one day and study those documents. They may help us uncover more Thomsen family history. I retired last year and have time on my hands....

Bjarne "BJ" Thomsen

date of birth June 1 1945

date of death November 22 2017

Bjarne “BJ” Thomsen was born in Copenhagen, Denmark to Holger Thomsen and Margrethe Hansen on June 1, 1945. He served in the Danish military before joining the East Asiatic Company (EAC), a shipping and passenger line company. At age 22, he moved to Bangkok, Thailand where he worked for EAC from 1967-1975. He married his only wife, Orawadee “Dee” Aviroottikamporn, at the Danish Embassy in Bangkok in 1975. EAC assigned him to offices in Lusaka, Zambia; Nairobi, Kenya; and Johannesburg, South Africa between 1976 and 1979. He eventually moved to Los Angeles, California in 1979, where he earned his Masters of Business Administration, and then to Portland, Oregon in 1982.

BJ loved the USA and American values. Portland became his new home and he proudly gained American citizenship in 1998. BJ made the most of his retirement years by making new friends, joining a walking group, book club, and serving on the board of the community organization “The Dill Pickle Club.” He volunteered for Meals on Wheels and was a volunteer driver for many years. BJ loved to read historical non-fiction and the works of Charles Dickens. He was a longtime member of the Columbia-Willamette YMCA at Duniway Park, where you could find him exercising, using the sauna, and taking long walks around the track with his dogs, Dexter and Toby. He was a regular at the Lake Oswego Library and Luscher Farm dog park in Lake Oswego. In recent years, BJ enjoyed researching his family genealogy and reconnecting with relatives in USA and Scandinavia. His favorite retreat was the “Little Hexagon” beach house in Gleneden Beach, Oregon, where his ashes will be scattered.

BJ is survived by his son, Skipp.

A remembrance will be held from 2-4pm on Saturday, January 20, 2018 at Cerimon House in Portland.

His arrangements were handled by Crown Memorial Services in Portland.