Biography

Naomi Christensen was born in 1934 on the family farm near Malvern in southwest Iowa. She graduated from Malvern High School in 1952 and attended college for two years in Sioux Falls, South Dakota after which she married Robert Christensen, a local farmer. They bought farm land near his parents and began farming near Braddyville, Iowa until they relocated near Strahan in Mills County in 1961. They had a son and daughter. Naomi and Robert raised hogs and purebred cattle. They bought over a thousand acres of land in the early 1980s just before the farm crisis, initiating years of hard farm labor to pay for the land. Naomi Christensen was very involved with 4-H, Boy Scouts, and the State Extension Service Council. She credits her leadership and vision to her work with the United Methodist Women and its affiliated organizations. She belongs to a small rural church, Stahan Methodist Church and through it became involve with the United Methodist Women at the church, district, jurisdictional, and international level. She worked with the Board of Global Ministries as a farm representative. Through the leadership opportunities in the United Methodist Women, she became interested a wide variety of political and social issues. She sought and fostered the development of a domestic violence shelter in southwest Iowa. She was voted one of four “Women of the Year” by the Iowa Commission on the Status of Women. In 1988, she campaigned for the post of Mills County Commissioner and won. She is actively involved in the development and conservation issues facing the county. She currently lives on the family farm in Mills County.

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