Wife, Mother, Grandmother

Naomi grew up as the youngest of three sisters. She spent her early years in rural St. Joseph County, Indiana. When she was about ten, the family moved to Weyerhaeuser, Wisconsin, for her father's work. When Naomi was 13, her mother was killed in a car crash. It was a tragedy that impacted the rest of Naomi's life. When she was 18, she moved back to St. Joseph County; she and her sister Letha lived together in South Bend, and Naomi worked as a maid. By the time she was 20, she was working as a weaver at the Bike Web factory. When she was 22, she married a 27-year-old World War II veteran who was a foreman at a company that made siding for houses. They lived at 113 E. Pennsylvania, in South Bend. When Naomi was 24, she birthed her first of four children, a daughter. At 26, she birthed another daughter. At 32, she birthed her first son. When she was about 39, she and her husband built a house in Lakeville. Her husband was credited with building the house, but Naomi was right beside him, even doing her share of the heavy lifting. When she was 41, she birthed her fourth child, a son. When her children were young, she was a Blue Bird leader and a 4-H leader. She was active in Eastern Star and served a time as Worthy Matron of her chapter. When her fourth child was still young, she returned to work, working as a cook at the Farmer's Market in South Bend, Indiana, later working as a cook at a restaurant in South Bend, and still later working as a clerk in a bakery. She was proud that all four of her children graduated from college; it was an opportunity she had never had. She became a grandmother at 58; she was widowed at 63. When she was 66, her granddaughter was born, and at 79, her youngest grandchild was born. In her later years, she lived first with daughter #1, and then with daughter #2. She died two months short of her 89th birthday. She was survived by four children and by three grandchildren.

In 2006, Naomi told of her husband's grandmother (Sarah Catherine) beginning a quilt in about 1950, a year after Naomi and her husband married. The grandmother used fabric that Naomi's husband's mother (Bernice) had first used decades earlier when she had made shirts for her three boys when they were young. Naomi's mother-in-law Bernice had yards of fabric left over from those old sewing projects. She offered the fabric to her mother-in-law (Sarah Catherine). The grandma of 1950 (Sarah Catherine) cut pieces for a pieced-work quilt; she got the pieces cut and most of the pieces put together before she died. A few years later, after one more death, someone found the quilt project and passed it along to Naomi. Over the decades, at different times, Naomi worked on the quilt that first began with her husband's mother making shirts for her three boys born in 1918, 1920, and 1921. Naomi finished the quilt in 2006 and gave it to her granddaughter, along with the story of how the quilt was put together over the decades, and over the generations. The circle of life.