Carmen C. (Kuegler) Housel

1944-2020

Carmen Carol (Kuegler) Housel was born on Jan. 4, 1944 at Marshfield hospital in Marshfield to Herbert Ernest Kuegler and Leona Marie Irene Schultz. She had one sister, Sharon Ann Kuegler, and grew up on a family farm in Dorchester. She attended Lawndale Grade School from 1950-1958 in a oneroom school with eight grades and one teacher. She attended Medford High School from 1958-1962 and graduated as valedictorian. She attended UW-Stevens Point from 1962-1966 and graduated Magna Cum Laude. Carmen took an extensive car trip that summer with her sister and college friends through the western United States. She married Lester Goodwin Mahla on Aug. 20, 1966 at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Dorchester. Lester was a teacher at Richmond Community Schools. He passed away in 2013. Carmen was a teacher at Port Huron Northern High School in Port Huron, Mich. from 1966-1972. She lived in Richmond, Mich. and in the summer of 1967 toured in England. She received a masters degree from the UW-Stout in the summer of 1971. Carmon had a daughter, Rachelle Renne Mahla on Jan. 28, 1972 in Port Huron. Her son, Ronson David Paul Mahla, was born on Jan. 28, 1972 in Port Huron. Carmen built and moved into a new house on Madison Street in Richmond, Mich. in the summer of 1975. She was a teacher in Richmond Community Schools from 1975-1982. She moved to Austin, Minn. and lived there from 1982-1986. She returned to Richmond, Mich. and taught at Richmond Middle School from 1986 until retirement in 2002. Carmen met Tord Lennart Smedberg online and married him on July 22, 2001 at a ceremony at Edison Inn in Port Huron. He was an automotive engine for General Motors and Ford. They moved to Farmington Hills, Mich. Tord passed away on Jan. 31, 2004. Carmen married David Malcolm Housel on Oct. 10, 2010 at an outdoor ceremony. The couple met on a Grand Princess cruise ship in 2009 on a southern Caribbean Cruise including Aruba. They moved to Temperance, Mich., where David had Housel’s Nursery, a third generation business, since 1940. He had also been a teacher and administrator, previously in the U.S., Greece and Sao Paulo, Brazil. Carmen had many fascinating land and cruise travel adventures including the Far East, Mediterranean, South America, Europe, Scandinavia and Russia, Hawaii, Alaska, most U.S. states and the Caribbean Islands. She traveled to the ends of the earth-crossed the Arctic Circle and rounded the end of South America at Cape Horn.

“ ‘Life is an adventure. Enjoy it.’ I lived it.”

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