1944 ~ 2024
Ione Robson passed away after a long illness in Northport, Michigan on October 18, 2024.
Ione was born on December 20, 1944 in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, to John and Edith (Martinson) Edahl. She and her two siblings Kathrine and Edward spent their childhood summers in Northport with their grandmother, Ida Peterson Edahl. She attended Michigan State University, where she majored in philosophy.
After graduation, Ione joined the Peace Corps and served her tour in Samoa, where she taught English at various village schools. While there, she met her future husband, Andy Robson. Following her Peace Corps tour, the couple continued traveling and teaching throughout the South Pacific, living for periods of time in the Solomon Islands, Fiji, and New Zealand. They returned to Andy’s home country of England in 1971, where they were married in his parents’ town of Winchester. Ione found work in the ethnology department of the British Museum in London; recataloging items stored in the basement to protect from bombing during the Second World War.
In the mid-1970s Ione and Andy relocated to Canberra, Australia, where their daughter Laura was born in 1979. They returned to the United States the following year and settled in Leelanau County, where their son Geoffrey was born in 1981. Ione deployed her remarkable carpentry and woodworking skills, which she had picked up in her travels, to rehabilitate her grandmother’s farmhouse just outside Northport, originally built by her great-grandfather, Hans Peterson. She and Andy subsequently lived in North Carolina, upstate New York, Oklahoma, Texas, and Wisconsin, always returning to Northport for the summers to reconnect with family and friends.
Ione was an accomplished gardener, and created an extensive and beautiful landscape at her family’s property in Northport. She was also an enthusiastic amateur musician, performing on period recorders with an early music chamber group in upstate New York, singing with the Northport Bethany Lutheran Church choir in the summers, and later learning to play the accordion. Her lifelong interest in crafts and folk art drew her to an eclectic array of artistic and creative pursuits over the years, including woven basketry inspired by the Appalachian craft traditions she observed in rural North Carolina; primitivist figuration painting, drawing on Polynesian practices; wood carving and statuary; and pottery, which she studied at the Munson Williams Proctor Art Institute in upstate New York. In Northport, she was a longstanding and committed member of the Leelanau Conservancy and a consistent advocate for the preservation and stewardship of northern Michigan’s remarkable landscapes and ecosystems.
Ione is survived by her daughter Laura Robson, son-in-law Tam Rankin, and two grandchildren, Andrew and Silje Rankin, of New Haven, Connecticut, and by her son Geoffrey Robson and his partner Kristen O’Connell, of Little Rock, Arkansas. Her husband Andy survived her by 10 days.
Cremation has taken place and a memorial service for both Ione and Andy will be held in the summer, at a date to be announced. Memorial donations in their honor can be directed to the Leelanau Conservancy. Please share condolences with the family at www.martinson.info.
Arrangements are with the Martinson Funeral Home and Cremation Services of Leelanau.
