'On a mission to live to 100': Victim of Rockaway Twp. fatal fire was beloved matriarch

The close-knit community surrounding Lake Telemark in Rockaway Township is reeling after the sudden loss of its beloved matriarch, Oddfrid Tokle, who died in a raging house fire Monday that also displaced three surviving generations of her family.

Tokle, 98, escaped her native Norway ahead of Nazi occupation in 1939 to become a pillar of a growing group of Norwegian immigrants who built homes together around the lake.

Sadly, she could not escape the fire that consumed the home she shared with six family members, including three great-grandchildren.

Her daughter, Vivian Tokle-Lynch, a nurse, left the home for work about an hour before the fire broke out just after 7:30 a.m. She is living with family members who are consoling her after she lost her mother, home and all possessions.

"It's unreal, I'm still wearing my scrubs from yesterday," Tokle-Lynch said Tuesday. "I have nothing left, and I don't even care. Just thinking about my mother, it's so heartbreaking. Such a terrible way to have gone."

Her son, Michael Lynch, had just arrived at his work in Vernon when he received a call from his wife who was screaming that the house was on fire.

"I could see the smoke when I was driving over the mountain to get there," he said.

By the time he arrived, the house was a lost cause. Neighbors and firefighters climbed a ladder to try to reach her second-floor bedroom but "the heat was just unbearable," said their neighbor, former councilman Tucker Kelley.

"My wife got the kids out but she couldn't get to my grandmother," Lynch said.

Tokle was part of a wave of Norwegian immigrants who settled in Bay Ridge, New York, and spent summer vacations renting cabins in the remote Lake Telemark section of the township. Eventually, many including Tokle became permanent residents.

"The community was so tight-knit, they kind of all built each other's houses on a barter system," Tokle-Lynch said. "My father was a carpenter. The guy down the street was a mason. Another friend was an electrician and a plumber. So many houses they helped build together, it was amazing."

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The Norwegian immigrants were avid skiers and ski-jumpers, so much so that they built their own makeshift ski jump nearby. Tokle-Lynch's father was the best of the bunch. Stuck in Norway during World War II, he eventually made it to the United States and made the U.S. Olympic ski-jump team just in time to compete in the 1952 Oslo Olympic Games in his native country.

Decades later, Tokle took on a matriarch role in Lake Telemark, where she was affectionately known as "Mor Mor," which means mother's mother in Norwegian, Tokle-Lynch said.

"She just was an absolutely loving, giving person to her entire extended family," Tokle-Lynch said.

Her mother had slowed down physically in recent years, but "her mind was clear as anything."

"She was on a mission to live to 100 years old, and she would have made it, too," Tokle-Lynch said. "This was not part of the plan."

Limited to getting around with a walker, Tokle took to Facebook.

"She would go to the kitchen table and be on her laptop from 4 to 8 p.m.," Tokle-Lynch said. "That was the highlight of her day."

She used social media to keep in touch with friends and family on both sides of the Atlantic, particularly where she grew up in Flekkefjord, a small town in southern Norway.

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"She was so proud that the mayor of the town wanted to be Facebook friends with her," Tokle-Lynch said. "He was using her as the historian of the town. So many people had moved away, but she remembered everything, names and dates like you wouldn't believe."

She also kept close ties with her late husband's family in Trondheim. "She communicated with them on a daily basis," Tokle-Lynch said. "She was a night owl and they are six hours ahead, so she would reach them when they were getting up."

Tokle-Lynch said she's been blessed by the outpouring of sympathy and support her family has received from both ends of her mother's network.

"You don't realize, in this day and age, so much craziness and cruelty and whatnot," Tokle-Lynch said. "But when a tragic event happens, all that kindness, it does come in an outpouring. And it's overwhelming."

A GoFundMe page has been established to collect money for the family's recovery that received more than $22,000 in pledges on the first day.

Kelley also directed anyone who wants to contribute clothing, diapers, checks or gift cards for the family to bring them to a drop-off point at the offices of Adjust Chiropractic Care, 85 Green Pond Road.

Specific needs include clothing for a 2-year-old boy and girls 4 and 11; adult female large and size 8½ shoes; and adult male XL shirts, 36-by-32 pants and size 10 shoes.

"Housing is something else that will be needed in the near future," Kelley said.

Pending arrangements will be handled by the Norman Dean Funeral Home in Denville, but there will be no funeral.

"That was her, she thought it was a waste of money," her daughter said with a laugh. "She would have wanted us to spend the money on going out and having a big party. That's what we will do."

William Westhoven is a local reporter for DailyRecord.com. For unlimited access to the most important news from your local community, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: wwesthoven@dailyrecord.com Twitter: @wwesthoven

This article originally appeared on Morristown Daily Record: Victim of Rockaway Twp. house fire was family matriarch