Darrel O. Fossum

Darrel Odean Fossum, 85, died March 4, 2026 at Hatton Prairie Village where he had been living since February 25, 2025. No services will be held at this time. Inurnment will take place at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church cemetery, Honeyford, ND at a later date.

Darrel, the fifth and final child of Peter and Ella (Suldahl) Fossum, was born on August 12, 1940 in Grafton, ND when his parents were renting a farm south of Cavalier, ND. The family moved to Wheatfield Township in Grand Forks County the following year where they bought a farm and made their permanent home. He and his four sisters, Elaine, Beverly, Phyllis, and Daphne, attended one-room schools in Wheatfield Township as well as schools in Seattle, WA and Larimore, ND. 

The family became members of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Honeyford, ND where Darrel was later confirmed and would see his own five children baptized and confirmed. 

Darrel graduated from Larimore High School in 1958 and attended North Dakota State University for three years where he enjoyed playing his alto sax in the NDSU Marching Band. He decided trade school was ultimately more useful and interesting to him and enrolled in a mechanics program at Hansen’s Technical and Trade School in Fargo. After graduating, he worked in an outboard boat motor factory in the Twin Cities until the ladies on the assembly line said, “If there is something else you can do with your life, you should do that instead of this kind of work.” He moved back to the Grand Forks area and became a mechanic at a Grand Forks service station where he and the other mechanics would have to stay at work as long as necessary each evening repairing any trucks that needed to be operable the next morning. Despite these career detours, Darrel was a farmer through and through, raising his first wheat crop at age 15 and maintaining a passion for agriculture throughout his life.

Darrel first met his wife, Judy Halvorson, when they were both piano students of the late Sis Yahna, but they were two years apart in school and didn’t develop a relationship until after high school— despite being in band and choir together. Not surprisingly, their shared love of music spanned the rest of their lives. They married on September 21, 1963 at Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Larimore after Judy completed her nurses’ training at St. Luke’s in Fargo.

They both described their early years of marriage in terms of austerity and hard work with many worries about how they’d afford groceries that month. In time, they decided to make better lives for themselves by moving to the family farm. Judy continued working at Deaconess Hospital in Grand Forks, sometimes struggling to drive to work in the snow in their 1962 Pontiac Catalina.

Darrel was also a “car guy,” fascinated with classic vehicles and keeping too many of them with the intention of restoring them “someday.”

Darrel and Judy had five children: Douglas, Lori, Sheri, Tricia, and John, born between 1965 and 1974. Both parents worked hard raising and supporting their children. They were so overwhelmed with farming and raising young children that Judy would claim, “I missed the 1970s completely.” Darrel would likely have said the same. During the winters when the farm was quiet, Darrel sought out extra work to help pay the bills. He hauled gravel and worked as a carpenter. For a time, he also served on the board of the Farmers Elevator of Honeyford.

Family vacations were important to Darrel and Judy. They made a few trips to Seattle to visit Darrel’s sisters there, but they also took their kids camping often. A winter vacation splurge was a weekend at a Holiday Inn in Detroit Lakes or Fargo. After their kids were grown, Darrel and Judy made a series of trips both in the U.S. and internationally, enjoying North Dakota Farmers’ Union bus trips the most since their fellow travelers were farmers like them.

They later followed in Peter and Ella’s footsteps by buying a winter home in the same Arizona neighborhood. Darrel and Judy spent their winters there together for a decade, enjoying time with three of Darrel’s sisters who also wintered there. They also got great pleasure from singing in their church choir.

As empty nesters, Darrel and Judy renewed their interest in fishing and camping, spending ten years at a farm-turned-campground on Devils Lake.

After Judy’s cancer diagnosis and death in December 2020, Darrel grieved deeply. This was the great loss of his life, he’d say in losing his wife of 57 years. He would repeatedly tell us, “Judy was so special to a lot of people. She was such a good person.”

And speaking of good people, Darrel was an honorable and quietly generous person. Darrel made significant charitable gifts locally during the last years of his life and requested no public recognition. He would simply say, “I’m happy I am able to do this.”

Darrel spent the last year of his life at Hatton Prairie Village, enriched by the contact with their remarkable staff and fellow residents alike. When his daughters tearfully told him it was time to move to a place for more help, and that it wouldn’t be the same as sleeping in his own bed, he said, “After a couple of nights it will feel like my own bed.”

Darrel is survived by his five children: Douglas (Kay), Lori, Sheri (Daniel Sletten), Tricia (Dennis Agnew), and John. Also surviving are seven grandchildren: Leah, Anna (James McLean), Mara, and Ella Fossum; Aaron (Emily), Jennifer, and Ryan Sletten; and one sister, Daphne Greenwood.

He was preceded in death by his wife, Judy; his parents; his sisters Beverly Lofthus, Phyllis Nation, and Elaine Poole; and a sister-in-law, Myrna Anderson.