Gretchen Gertrude Vestermark-Grimm
GRIMM, BAILEY, ZUBER, SHELLADY, VESTERMARK, ROSS
Posted By: Sarah Fletcher (email)
Date: 12/23/2015 at 10:11:15
I am writing this in memory of our Father, Robert Charles Grimm and our Brother, Robert Lea Grimm. Also, I write on behalf of my older Sisters, Karen Kay Bailey, Gretchen Ann Zuber, and Nancy Mae Shellady and for all the grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren.
Iowa City lost one of its funniest, most witty, colorful and memorable characters December 14, 2015. She truly loved Iowa and represented it proudly. For a person who lived through a critical illness in 1958, numerous car crashes, and one car that blew-up, it is remarkable she lived those 98 years!
Gretchen Gertrude Vestermark-Grimm was born October 22, 1917 at Sabula, Iowa to parents Frederic “Ricky” and Nis Vestermark, German immigrants, who began Iowa life as farmers.
Mother grew up having six brothers, she being second to the youngest. Three other siblings had passed at young ages. She spoke fondly of all her brothers. They were all handsome, healthy men, close in brotherhood. We can only imagine how they spoiled their sister.
In particular, she spoke of her brother, Seymour Day, a University of Iowa medical graduate. As a teenager, she had lived with his family on Ellis Island while he was on the medical team for incoming immigrants. He was a renowned psychiatrist for the U.S. Navy who treated the young men of war with post-traumatic stress disorder of which he named. He later became Head of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland.
She also spoke of brother, Lyle Arnold. To her he was the fun-loving, “free spirited brother”, much like herself, witty, adventuresome, curious, always on the move, but yet not too responsible.
Mother grew up in the decades that invented the future. She saw the first cars, home electricity, penicillin, running water, radio, The Depression, Prohibition, TV, man walk the moon, the digital and computer age. This and so much more that has come into fruition.
She was thrilled to see the Queen Mary sail the Potomac River, Gypsy Rose Lee dance, Louis Armstrong play, and Liberace perform. On a hill side at Kansas City, Missouri she saw the B-25s that were constructed there being air-ferried for World War II. She also watched Grant Wood paint “Spring Plowing” north of Iowa City as she baby-sat his children.
In seven years between 1937 and 1944 Mother had five children. Each child was born in a different state due to war-time jobs for our father. States included Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska.
In the early 1950s Mother was able to fulfill a dream and that was to become a licensed Practical Nurse. She graduated as a University of Iowa student with the very first LPN class. Later for a long period, she was a surgical scrub nurse for the University of Iowa Hospital’s Otolaryngology Head Surgery Operating Room and as a nurse for Ward C-22.
As a child Mother grew up on a farm having very little. Her parents had divorced and her mother moved the family to Iowa City to better themselves. Transportation for the family was horse and wagon. She tells how her mother hitched the wagon and they both rode to the dance hall in the upstairs room of the Morse, Iowa General Store. In 1968, our Father bought her that General Store and she lived there for 17 years.
I’d like to share three interesting facts of our Mother’s life. One: She loved playing the piano and organ. She had no piano as a child but would sit and pretend her windowsill was a key board and tapped away her pretend notes. Later a piano was given to the family, then she played strictly by ear and memory with her eyes closed and her head tipped back as to remember the flow of the music. Treasured friends heard her play at the Senior Center and later at the Legacy Home. We children would wake up on Saturday mornings to hear her playing “Autumn Leaves”. Two: Macular Degeneration took her totally by surprise. She never thought she would become almost blind. As it progressed she rarely complained and managed it well. She also volunteered her vision to the University of Iowa Ophthalmology Dept. for research. Lastly, Three: She would notoriously walk up to a complete stranger, anytime, anywhere, and befriend that person. If not becoming a friend was fate, then the memory of the experience lasted.
Our Mother lived a very full life. She saw it all. She did it all. Her talents were numerous from pottery to block printing, to weaving, and more. There were those who didn’t understand her or care for her much at all, but there were many who loved her, admired her, and respected her.
Both our Parents were intelligent and well educated. To sit and talk with either, was a memory to last. They both lived to know and tell so much. We were raised “to see, learn, and play” and that is what we did.
Mother requested No Services. In lieu of flowers, she asked that contributions be made to the University of Iowa Macular Degeneration Research program.
Thank you all for being her friends and especially thank you to Bonnie Matalliano and Linda Eaton for caring for our Mother.
Susan Grimm-Ross
Carpe’ diem in Heaven Mother
Lensing Funeral & Cremation Service
Johnson Obituaries maintained by Cindy Booth Maher.
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