Ken Skalitzky
Thank you all for coming. For anyone who may not know or remember me, I am Ken Skalitzky, Alice’s oldest son. I am joined by my brother, Tom and his wife Vicki; my sister, Nancy and her husband Jim; my brother, Steve and his wife Ann; my sister, Karen and her husband Clinton; as well as several of her grandchildren and great grandchildren. Her two sisters, Neva Jean Cole, the eldest, and Doris Sides, the youngest, are also here this evening. We appreciate your presence at this celebration of life for our mother, Alice Miller Skalitzky Baumann Baldwin.
My mother was born at home on March 24, 1930 and just recently celebrated her 85th birthday. She had a favorite cartoon on the kitchen door, “I am so old my friends in heaven will think I didn’t make it”. It comforts me to know she is in heaven now.
Mother didn’t much celebrate birthdays over the years as they seemed to remind her of several sad events throughout her life that happened about the time of her birthday: the death of her father, her father-in-law, her second husband, Leander, and her third husband John. Oh yes, and I was born just a couple of days after her birthday.
Mother grew up during the depression and she told many stories over the years of the hardships she and her sisters endured. It prompted her to save and reuse almost everything including jars, boxes, plastic tubs, even TV Dinner plates. She always had a large garden and canned and froze produce to tide us over the winter. She always “put up” the same amount even though there was stuff left over from the years before and her family was shrinking. Her canned peaches were extra special and she always shipped her canned Michigan sweet corn, the best, to AZ where she and John used to winter to enjoy there. When Vicki married Tom, my mother lent her canner that summer but at Christmas Vicki got one of her own. Mother would loan about anything but she was hesitant to lend the canner.
My mom was an adequate cook, oh she had some specialties. Her baked beans were some of the best in the county. Some other things were just boiled to death. I was in the Army before I realized you could eat broccoli and cauliflower raw. But she was an incredible baker. She made breads and rolls, Christmas candy, cakes and pies: cherry, apple, and blueberry. She didn’t believe that lemon meringue pie was good the next day so you better eat it or it was thrown out. We lived on a dairy farm and so most Sundays we made homemade ice cream from our own cream. For those who knew her well, though, it was the cinnamon rolls that were her trademark. They were incredible.
Mother was left handed. You would never have believed it after seeing her handwriting. She had the most beautiful penmanship and never did that contortion thing that you frequently see left-handers do. And she taught others to write while being a school teacher at St Michaels and at Morley Elementary School in the Morley-Stanwood School District. She was a popular teacher there and always tried to make her classroom interesting. She would hatch baby chickens and ducks, grow plants, do science projects, and encourage reading. I know this is all true as my mom taught with a college friend, Kris Lenz, for several years at Morley-Stanwood. Mother had been teaching on an old elementary certificate for several years but had to go back to college in the fall of 1970 to finish her degree. That was the same year I started college and she thought it would be great fun if she and I carpooled to CMU. Let it be noted that my degree is from Grand Valley instead. Education was very important for her and all of us kids went to college. To paraphrase Mark Twain: “When I was a boy of 14, my mother was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have her around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much she had learned in seven years.”
Mother used to joke that it wasn’t fair that all her friends got to celebrate 50th Anniversaries because she too had been married 50 years. My
