Amber loves being a Baby too. She was off the binky till Madalynne came along, then she started sneaking baby sister's binky.
Making Browies a couple days ago
Madelynne and Amber
Madalynne
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Binky Babies!
Amber has to have her baby too!
Always kissing on little sister!
We brought Mom home to see Dad on Thanksgiving 2006, it was great!
Mom and Amber Joy. Amber loved pushing Mom around the nursing home in her wheel chair. Amber Loved Mom.
Here are two breif biographys of my parents
Mom Died on January 9, 2007 My sister Carol, Her husband David and I were there with her at the nursing home. We sang about 5 of her favorite hymns from church. The last one we sang was Rock of Ages and she was gone.
Arvilla Emily Zahnow Clarke
Arvilla was born April 28, 1925 in Detroit, Michigan to Fredrick Carl Allvin Zahnow and Emily Molzon. She was the 4th child and first daughter of 9 children who lived to adulthood. We know she is having a great reunion right now with 6 of her siblings, Frederick, Milton, Richard, Doris, Alice & Myron as well as her parents.
She leaves behind 2 siblings, Arthur Zahnow and Shirley Moore.
She was a little blonde in her youth. Her parents bought a farm in Imlay City, just 50 miles north of Detroit, when she was about 9 months old.
Mother looks a lot like her mother, except Mother has blue eyes. (Her mother had soft brown eyes.) She grew up on the farm in Imlay City just 1 mile north of town and next to the cemetery. The family was very poor and lived a simple, hard life on the farm. They had chickens, cows, horses and pigs in the early days. Later the horses were replaced with a tractor.
She was a hard worker and a tough ole farm girl. She used to stay in the fields helping to throw hay on the wagon during harvest while her sister, Alice, went to the house to start the cooking much of the time. We have some pictures of Mother guiding the plow behind a horse and later behind a tractor while Aunt Shirley drove. They were preparing the family vegetable garden for the spring planting that day.
She used to walk to The Lutheran Church in Imlay City, Mi , about 1 ½ miles from their home, every Sunday. She had a nice singing voice and was a member of the choir in her youth. She grew up in that church and went 7 years without missing one Sunday, rain or shine. She graduated from catechism when she was 13 years old. Her sister, Doris, once told us that she and Alice used to look up to Mother when they were children, because Mother was such a good example to them.
She got a job when she was 16 years old at the grocery store in town and most of her money went toward helping buy the staples they didn’t grow on the farm.
Mother worked in Detroit for Cadillac for a couple years after she graduated from high school in 1942. These were the war days when the women took over while the men were off to war. She and her older brothers hung out together a lot in their young adulthood.
Mother and Dad met inside the meat locker at the Brown City locker store in November of 1946. Grandpa and Grandma Clarke owned this store. Dad was a butcher there. They met in the freezer. They were married April 26, 1947 in the home of his parents, Thomas L Clarke and A Duelda Murray, by his father who was the justice of the peace.
Carol remembers looking up at Grandma Zahnow’s stove watching Mom can food one year. She was not tall enough to see the top of the stove. Later Mother told her that she had canned over 300 quarts of food that year when Grandma had heart problems.
We remember when Dad almost died of Hepatitis A in 1957. Mother had to take a second job that year to support the family which consisted of our parents, Janice, Cathie & Carol. We, girls, stayed with Grandma Zahnow much of that year until Dad went back to work. Those were tough times.
Mother was very gentle to us girls. She was very well mannered and lady like. She took special time with each of us girls. She made many of our clothes. We knew Mother loved us.
IN 1957 one of her best friends who had moved to Bradenton, FL in 1956, died suddenly. Mother was devastated. She went to the funeral in Florida. We remember Dad saying when she returned, "Don’t get any ideas. We are NEVER moving to Florida". We learned early in life ‘Never’ to say ‘Never’ The next year Curtis Wright in Utica, MI, laid off all employees and closed its doors and Dad was in Orlando where he had a job with Martin Marietta by October and we followed one month later to become permanent residents of Florida on November 1, 1958.
Mother worked for Howard, Needles, Tammen & Bergendolf Civil Engineers for several
years and then became a full time homemaker after we girls were out of school.
In 1961 our brother, Tom, was born in Winter Garden. It has a happy time.
She was involved in the Civil Air Patrol for about 10 years while we girls were in our teens and retired as a Captain. She did a whole lot of typing! She and Dad took us girls out on bivouacs and we received a lot of survival skills in the woods along with several other Civil Air Patrol Cadets.
A few years later in 1979 her own mother became ill and she spent several months in Michigan with her taking care of her before she passed away. Her sister, Shirley, said that she doesn’t know what they would have done without her assuming the role of primary care giver for grandma.
She and Dad moved to Tangerine in 1998. Mother was already ill with Alzheimer’s disease. She had been forgetting where she put things for a couple years by then. It was our turn to take care of her and we did.
She spent the last 20 months of her life in Avante nursing center in Mt Dora. She was very happy there. She smiled a lot every time we saw her and the staff loved her. She was very gentle and sweet to them too.
The best and most important epitaph one can have for her is "Beloved Wife and Mother". That will be on her memorial.
Dad Died on January 13th, 2007 just 4 days after Mom at about 6:50 am and it was suppose to be the day we would bury Mom. All the family were gathered around Dad the Night before. We had a rather large group there from all over, Michigan, South Carolina, South Florida, Georgia..As we stood around Dad, We all prayed, including Dad. He was very alert, but very weak. Dad was able to see his newest Great Grand Daughter, Madalynne, which we put up on the bed next to him. Dad Went quietly in his sleep, never woke again. We had a double funeral on Sunday the 14th for them. It was a beautiful going home for them. Dad only wanted to live one day longer then Mom, to see she was taken care of. God granted that. We had good parents.
William LeRoy Clarke
Bill was born May 28, 1925 in Port Huron, MI to Thomas LeRoy Clarke and Anna Duelda Murray. He is the 4th child and youngest. We know that he is having a great reunion with Arvilla on the other side now. He is now able to meet his sister, Wanda, for the first time and embrace his parents and brother, Warren who have all gone on ahead of him. He leaves behind one brother, Aubrey.
He was a little fair haired child who loved tearing electronic things down and putting them back together.
He has blue eyes like his mother whom he resembled in appearance. He grew up in Port Huron, Flint and Brown City, MI. He graduated from Brown City High School in 1942.
He didn’t stay to receive his diploma because he joined the Army Air Corp and was radar operator on many flights.
He attended Michigan State University.
After he and Mother were married he repaired TVs a while and later he was employed by Curtis Wright in Utica, MI. He was a Ham radio operator in the 50s. He liked convertible cars. We had 3.
He took a job with Martin Marietta in 1958 when Curtis Wright closed their doors. He invented the pager, the precursor to the cell phone while and employee at Martin.
He loved the beach when we moved to Orlando. He cooked out a lot on the grill and like cooking the Thanksgiving turkey out.
.He had a pilots license and loved flying and flew until he had heart trouble and could not fly anymore. He was in Civil Air Patrol for over 20 years and retired as a Lt Colonel. He flew many search and rescue missions and taught teenagers survival skills.
He spent much time in his ‘laboratory’, so he called his shop, repairing things and tinkering with Electronic gadgets. There was almost no job he would not take on.
We girls told him that he couldn’t install his wooden floor last year. So, he installed it just to prove us wrong.
He had a poker face when it came to telling jokes. One had to know him to understand that he was joking.
He had a good heart. He was very devoted to Mother. He took care of her for over 10 years as she became more ill with Alzheimer’s Disease. When we had to put her in Avante Nursing Center, he went there everyday to feed her. One could set their clock everyday by his car passing by to go see Mother.
He said for several years that he wanted to live just one day longer than Mother.
Well, he lived 4.
