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Swedish man follows in his father’s footsteps
Swedish man follows in his father’s footsteps
Swedish man follows in his father’s footsteps
Elder Giske here in 1968 as an exchange student
By FLYNN ESPE
The East Oregonian
PENDLETON – Gustav Giske has quite the weekend ahead of him. After traveling from Pendleton to his home country of Sweden, the 19-year-old will barely have time to recover from jet lag before starting a potential career Monday making wood furniture.
“I’ll work there for a couple of years and see if I like it,” Giske said Thursday from the North Hill home of Rudy Rada, where the recent high school graduate has been visiting the past three weeks.
This was Giske’s third time visiting Rada, first in 2001 and again in 2007. But the relationship between the 19- and 91-year-old men goes much further back, beginning in 1968 when Rada and his wife hosted Giske’s father, Kjell Havnevik, as a high school foreign exchange student.
“Everybody in town … they remember his dad Kjell because he was a great soccer player. But he played football here,” Rada said. “And he kicked a field goal over in Baker, a 44 (yard kick), that was a record up until … several years back.”
Havnevik, originally from Norway, went on to earn a doctorate degree and now teaches at Uppsala University in Sweden. But he also kept in contact with Rada and visited Pendleton a handful of times in the ensuing years, including his son’s first visit eight years ago.
“Gustav is very different from his father,” Rada said. “Gustav is quiet.”
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