Remembering Grandma Rita: So Encouraging And Understanding

Your Mother Was Very Special To Me

By Sharon Wysong Olwin

There is definitely a feeling of connection  and I have long regretted that I haven’t known my cousins as adults. There are great memories from visits when we were younger and also when Roger and I visited at your parents when Stephanie was about 16 months.

Your mother was very special to me. Very easy to talk with and was so encouraging and understanding during the time my mom was sick. She had a very interesting life and loved her children and grandchildren very much. Every holiday she would send pictures (especially the Thanksgiving celebration) and obviously enjoyed every minute of those times.

We got back from vacation last week so I finally have been able to look at some old pictures to send. There is a picture of your Mom and Dad on her birthday that I love – your family probably has it already. Also some pictures of Minnesota visits – one at the cabin mom and dad rented up north every summer, some at their house, some at our first and second houses, and one of you and I at your house! We also have some pictures that you might like of a fishing trip Uncle Bob took with Roger on our first boat up on Lake Superior.

Hope you enjoy them. Please share with Susan, Mary, Bob & John. I don’t have their contact information but just want to send all of you hugs and say that we miss your mother too.

Love to all, Sharon

 

 

 

Grandma & Grandpa & Everybody Else!

Remembering Grandma Rita & Family

Photos From Trish Wysong 

Remembering Grandma Rita: Grandma Loved To Laugh

Rita & Bob Were Extraordinarily Lucky

By Jeremy Weld

Grandma Rita loved to laugh. She enjoyed it whether the joke was on her or on someone else. She laughed every year through the skits her kids and grandkids made up to help her and Bob celebrate their anniversary which were largely based around silly things she and Grandpa Bob did. She thought they were so funny she sent recordings of them so we could all laugh too. Not only was she quick to laugh, but she was very game and up to a challenge.

One only needs to read her book to see how challenging living in the Foreign Service is. And think of her piling into a car to head north to Alaska with you all camping the whole way. And although we sometimes laugh remembering the giant king salmon she caught -- it is well known in Alaska that the treacherous Klutina River, where she caught it, is one of the hardest rivers in the state to actually bring a salmon to shore on.

She was lucky to have a sharp mind right up to the end of her life. Furthermore, Rita and Bob were extraordinarily lucky to have kids who devoted so many years to helping her and Bob land softly. I have often said that the best we can hope for is to have someone on this side to comfort us as we go and someone waiting on the other to greet us as we arrive. I know Bob is as grateful to Susan, Bobby, John and Mary for the extraordinary effort you have made to make her comfortable and secure in her final years - as are Linda and I.

July 27, 2019
- Jeremy Weld

Remembering Grandma Rita: Love From Julia

From One Great Writer & Cook To Another

Grandma Rita's Letter From Julia Child

Remembering Grandma Rita: On The Open Ocean In A Wheat Chex Sweater

Wearing one of Mom's homemade sweaters while crossing the Atlantic.

 

Living The High Life With Grandma Rita

By Linda Wysong Weld 

Grandma Rita was always quite the lady. When you looked at her in her older years, you could still see it. She had put Ponds Cold Cream on her face every single night when she was younger. I can still remember her standing there in the bathroom, peering in the mirror, and dabbing it here and there.

You never knew. You just might want to look really terrific as you aged.

And, she DID look really terrific. She always dressed so nicely, too. Her clothes when she was in her 90's were very reminiscent of her clothes decades earlier. Tailored, attractive, layered...

But she was also practical.  She was smack between two cultures. She grew up in South Dakota and she lived the "the high life" in the Foreign Service. She chose bits and pieces of both these very different lives.

At heart, she liked making things. She knit sweaters for everybody: Grandpa, me, Grandpa's mom in Indiana... Her sweaters were very distinctive. They were made of little squares -- kind of like Wheat Chex, all piled up on each other. And the arms were always ridiculously long, as if she had made an article of clothing for a gorilla instead of a 12-year old girl.  She chose unique and unexpected colors, too. Like baby blue.

I liked her sweaters. I wore them all the way through my years at Belt Jr. High, and then on to Wheaton High School, even though they were probably wildly unfashionable at the time.

Here's a picture of me and Mom, on an ocean liner (either the Independence or the Constitution) coming back to the United States from Beirut. Mom is in her lovely little tailored outfit, with a French scarf and high heels. I am in one of her wonderful sweaters (see the long, long sleeves all rolled up) and I'm wearing saddle shoes.

If you look really closely, you can see that Mom is carrying a knitting bag, with the knitting needles poking out. You never knew. Perhaps there would suddenly be a random minute or two to work on yet another Wheat Chex sweater to present (all wrapped up quite carelessly in white tissue paper tied with thin little string) to some unsuspecting relative next Christmas!