She is manager of the historic Ephraim Co-op on Main Street, the original home of Snow College. She is also one of the few people in Ephraim to have a grandfather (not a great-grandfather or great-great-grandfather) who crossed the plains in the mid 1800s.

Her hearty grandfather, Soren P. Jensen, was born in Denmark in 1843 and arrived in Moroni in 1862 at 19. He was never a polygamist. Nevertheless, because he kept outliving his wives, he married five times.

His fourth wife, Martine Ring, was the mother of Soren Jensen’s 10th and 11th children. The 11th child, Nellie, born when Jensen was in his 60s, is Crane’s mother. She is in her 90s, living in a care center in Fairview, and is undoubtedly one of the few children of early Mormon pioneers who are still alive.

After Martine died, Soren married his fifth wife when he was in his 70s. He died in 1936 at 93.

“He had a terrific immune system,” says Crane, a trait she believes he passed on to his children and grandchildren. “Once they buried eight people in one grave because of cholera. He helped with the burial but never contracted the disease.

Soren Jensen and members of his immediate family converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Arhus, Denmark, one of the first places in Scandinavia where the church sent missionaries. “It was a large family—eight or 10, I don’t know exactly,” says Crane.

The family came by sailboat to America, crossed the plains, and settled in Moroni, which is northeast of Ephraim. In time, Soren Jensen moved to Ephraim, and built a house that is still standing on the northeast corner of 200 South 200 East. Originally, the house was on a one-acre lot and was surrounded by an apple and plum orchard.

During subsequent decades, besides marrying and burying wives, and raising children, Soren Jensen did a host of things.

He was a stonecutter in the oolite quarry that produced stone for the Manti Temple. He was sent back to St. Louis to help other saints cross the plains. He was sent briefly to colonize in Piute County. He also fought in the Blackhawk War, a conflict between Mormon colonizers in Sanpete County and the Ute Indians.

Both Nellie and her brother, Harold Jensen, stayed in Sanpete County. Nellie married David Doke, who was from Los Angeles, and had four children. Crane is the only one among her siblings living in Sanpete County. (Crane is proud of the fact that Doke’s father, her paternal grandfather, served in the Union Army during the Civil War.)

Harold Jensen and his wife had two daughters and a son. The daughters left the area, but the son, Jay H. Jensen, another Soren Jensen grandchild still lives in Ephraim.

Crane has fond memories of growing up in Ephraim and attending Snow High School, a teacher training facility once operated by Snow College. Later she graduated from Snow College, spent a year at Ohio State University, and received her bachelor’s degree in business education at Brigham Young University.

She married an Air Force pilot and lived around the country, ultimately settling in Newport Beach, California, where she worked in real estate development, investment, and the movie industry. Her two children and three grandchildren are still in Southern California.

In 1991, she moved back to Ephraim to take care of her mother, and immediately became engrossed in community affairs. She has served on the Ephraim City council and has been a key player in the Scandinavian Heritage Festival for nearly a decade.

Two years before she returned, local citizens formed the nonprofit Sanpete Trade Association/Ephraim Co-op. The organization operates the co-op building, which includes a craft shop on the first floor and a large second floor room that is rented out for concerts, receptions, exhibitions, weddings, etc. The organization also stages a craft show each year in Manti during the Mormon Miracle Pageant. Crane has been the manager of the organization since 1992.

While she sometimes misses Southern California, she says, “I’ve enjoyed the past 10 years. They’ve been interesting. I’ve enjoyed seeing a lot of people I knew as a child, and I’ve enjoyed living in this peaceful valley.