Lisa Lund never lost her taste for Swedish pancakes, and her family’s recipe can still be found in grocery stores.
Lund, who died Jan. 18, and her late husband, John Lund, ran Lund’s Swedish Pancake Restaurant in downtown Denver for years.
Lund’s Swedish Pancake Mix is still on grocery shelves.
Lisa Lund didn’t cook at the restaurant, which was at 1817 18th St. near what was the old post office. She worked the cash register and served the lunch counter, said Bob Eriksson, a longtime family friend.
“The gimmick was Swedish pancakes,” but the restaurant had a full menu, he said.
Lisa Lund “was a tiny person (about 5 feet tall) with red hair. She was feisty, like a little train engine that kept running,” Eriksson said.
“She had a million-dollar smile,” said her niece, Anne Lawson, of Roanoke, Va.
Lund, a native of Sweden, also had her own ideas about most things.
Lawson made the pancakes once, complete with lingonberry jam. After they’d eaten, her aunt told her, “You can’t leave until I have taught you how to make these correctly.”
Her directness was standard.
At her service Friday at Our Savior’s Lutheran Church, the minister, the Rev. John F. Backe, recalled Lund telling him that when she moved to Denver, friends said they would introduce her to a “nice Swedish man.”
Said Lund, “If I had wanted a Swedish man I would have stayed in Sweden.”
“She was sweet and talkative – no wallflower,” said her friend and neighbor Ted Carnes.
She did meet a Swede – John Lund – at a Halloween party given by the Young Republicans, and the two married in 1953. He died in 1984.
The restaurant was begun by John Lund’s parents in 1911 and remained open for 50 years. The place was a favorite with judges at the nearby federal court, as well as office workers.
The family went national with the mix in 1958. A Denver Post story that year reported that President Eisenhower used the mix while visiting Fraser. He wrote John Lund, describing “fine success” with the pancakes.
Lisa Olsson was born Nov. 30, 1915, in Jarbo, Sweden. She came to the U.S. in the early 1950s, and, after short stays in Allentown, Pa., and San Francisco, she settled in Denver.
At first she lived in a rented room at the Lutheran Ladies Home on Capitol Hill. At one time she was a cashier at the Albany Hotel in downtown Denver and for many years was assistant manager at the Ogden Nines Apartments, 999 Ogden St. She lived there for 30 years and died there.
Carnes, a pianist who helped take care of Lund, played an elaborate arrangement of the hymn “To God be the Glory” at her memorial service.
Soloist and friend Linda Carlson sang a favorite hymn – the first verse in Swedish – “for Lisa,” she said.
Lisa Lund is survived by six nieces and nephews and two great-nieces.
Staff writer Virginia Culver can be reached at 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com.
