We have a favorite aunt who died a couple of days ago. She lived almost her entire life with the results of polio that she contracted when she was very young. For years, she worked as a secretary. When she could no longer do that, she went to live with my oldest cousin Carol and her husband Dick. They have been her wonderful caretakers for what I heard was thirteen years. The thing I remember about her was that she knitted slippers for all us kids for Christmas several times. I think she did that for all of her nephews and nieces. That is an amazing thing because She had nine brothers and sisters and there were lots of nephews and nieces.
One of my favorite memories of Alma was the time I spent a weekend with her at her trailer house in Eugene. She regularly invited her nephews and nieces to stay with her. She swam laps at the swimming pool three or four times per week for exercise. She loved to dive off the diving board. That memory is an inspirational and joyous one. She must have been approaching forty at the time. She had polio. She did not swim or dive gracefully, but she loved it and I loved her for her joy. She always had a joke for us kids, too. The kids in our family reveled in the somewhat scandalous (at the time–it would be nothing, now) joke about the woman with the yellow ribbon around her neck.
Most of all, though, she was a kind and godly woman with a great spirit. She had the kind of spirit to which all good people aspire. She is in a better place now.
JoAnn Waldo
Glad for all you wrote about Alma, Ken. We didn’t know her very well of course but would be with her at Carol and Dick’s when we would visit. She loved having her laptop to make touch with the world. She and Carol always had numerous projects going 🙂 Glad for her that she is in a place with no more pain nor physical limitations.
Thanks JoAnn. You expressed all our thoughts EXACTLY right.