Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Ida was a very special friend. It was my great honor and privilege to have helped care for her in the last months of her life and to prayed with her.
Although I won't be able to be in NJ for the burial of her ashes, please know that Ida's life was honored and celebrated in her church according to her beliefs and wishes.
Not everyone has able to honor Ida without soliciting funds for that which Ida did not support. Please take comfort in knowing that she passed peacefully after hearing the Lord's prayer. She experienced no distress or pain, her parting from us was joyful in spirit.
To honor Ida's life, please consider giving to the charity of your choosing that is in concert with your love and respect for Ida and for those things that Ida believed in.
I am including my remembrances of Ida as I spoke them during her memorial service in Oregon.
As delivered
13 March 2007
Saying good bye to Ida is less about parting than it is “Bon Voyage” to a dear friend.
She always knew where she wanted to go next:
-she had places to go,
-people to see
-and things to do.
When Ida's life began in 1915, Woodrow Wilson was president, the German U-boats had sunk the Lusitania, and women couldn't vote in a country with a population of just a little more than 100 million.
Ida was born the same year as Yul Brenner, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, and Ingrid Bergman.
Ida loved music & dancing, listening to the radio and watching great movies, although they weren't “old movies” yet.
William Boeing was taking his first flight lesson and the first successful launch of an aircraft from a ship happened that year too. Ida loved to fly and she had a hand in building the the Liberty ships during WWII.
Ida took her place in the world among the turmoil of the first World War and watched her country change so much during her lifetime.
Throughout Ida's life, she was part of and had been witness to so much in history and yet her live was anchored in the joys and blessings of every day life.
Each day of her life here on earth was part of her adventure and now these things become part of our memories of her.
Ida loved to tell stories and the best ones, she told more than once.
Every new friend learned all about her daughter Jane and her husband Warren and Ida's grandchildren Krista and Walter.
As you got to know Ida , you would be introduced everyone in her family;
her parents, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews and all their children, too.
Ida would share every card, letter and picture. These were the souvenirs of the bounty of her life and the props she used to embellish her stories.
Ida had been blessed with clarity of mind to her last days. She could recall her first train ride just as easily as her first ride in the rumble seat with her husband Walt.
Her marriage with Walt was the very center of Ida's happiness and her love for him never wavered. Ida expressed the legacy of that love through her daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren. She was always there for them and would put their needs ahead of her own.
Walt and Ida moved from New Jersey to work in the shipyards in Vancouver Washington during WWII.
She was proud of her part in the building of the Liberty Ships.
During the war, she welded, drove trucks, and couriered brief cases of ration stamps handcuffed to her wrist. She would shop on the way, briefcase and all.
Ida would crochet or write letters home in the truck, between her assignments.
Her hands were never idle, Ida didn't know how to be bored.
She always had something to do.
Ida was no stranger to Oregon when she moved to here 6 years ago.
One of Ida's friends told me, “What she admired most about Ida
was her ability to move to a new place and make friends so easily.“
She said Ida would get right out there and introduce herself , “Hi I'm Ida.”
Then and there, Ida had begun the process of making another new friend.
She always had more people to see.
Although not a lot of people in Oregon knew Ida from around an airport, Ida loved to fly.
Her husband Walt had been a pilot and together they had owned two airplanes during their lives.
Together they flown out with some of their airport buddies to have lobster for dinner in Maine (and then she would add that Robert Goulett got the last one)
or take off to have a piece of pie at a diner somewhere or other. Always in the company of friends.
I had asked Ida if she had ever wanted to learn to fly.
She told me that Walt had handed her the yoke and she just kept pulling back afraid to get too close to the ground. She got a thrill taking the controls, but more thrilled to have Walt to take over again. She was so excited to be there, and happy to be going anywhere Walt wanted to go.
Another of Ida's great loves was good food.
She watched lots of cooking shows, Emeril was a one of her favorites.
She could tell you all about the the best recipes of Rachel Ray, Paula Deen or Martha Stewart. She knew the entire show schedule and all the channels by heart. (Every one came after Bob Barker & the Price is Right)
Ida had a kitchen drawer bulging with recipes gathered from just about every possible source.
She spent a good part of last Thanksgiving passing the secrets of her turkey soup to her grandson Walter. She wanted to make sure he knew when to add the vegetables and the noodles or it wouldn't be just right.
When she went back to New Jersey to visit friends, my mother & father-in-law and her rest of her family, she loved to go to my brother-in-law's bakery and work in the kitchen with my mother-in-law Margaret.
Ida would be perched on top of one of the big flour bins on rollers, at one of the benches she would be cracking hard boiled eggs for the egg salad in the deli or dipping rum balls in chocolate.
She would be there all day, enjoying the laughter and conversations while the work was done. At the end of the day was big pay off, a box of rumballs and a fresh loaf of rye bread.
If you knew Ida at all, you have heard, more than once,
“OOOOOOOOOOO that's Gooood!”
Ida loved good food.
Ida valued every experience in life, the large and the small.
With equal joy, she could appreciate a dusting of snow on Peterson's Butte, (a view from her family room window), she would share her pictures of new babies, graduations & weddings or what she had for breakfast that day. She enjoyed all things.
Ida had so many friends, and she valued us all.
Ida's family extended beyond relatives, she included everyone at her church, her neighbors, her sisters in Eastern Star, her fellow Elkettes & her card playing buddies from all over town too.
She gathered friends as she gathered memories, treasuring each of us.
Her heart always had room for another friend and her arms always had another hug waiting to be collected.
Ida remembered us all in prayers, every night, without fail.
On our behalf she asked:
-for our burdens to be lessened,
-our worries to be calmed,
-our grief, confusion or anger to be replaced with comfort, understanding and peace.
She passed quietly and peacefully to the hands of God and she is now where she's wanted to be for some time.
Back with her husband Walt and the departed family members that she introduced us to in her stories.
Thank you Ida, for helping us
-to understand the great joy of a life well lived
-to see the glory in all things and
-to appreciate the importance of having friends.</b></font><br><br>
