Lost a Quilter
01-13-2011, 11:24 AM
#4
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Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: Fryeburg, Maine
Posts: 931
Phyllis Schneck
The East Coast winters drove Phyllis Schneck, 79, and her husband, Ernie, to Arizona a decade ago. The couple, who met as teens in New Jersey, spent the final years of a 56-year marriage in a quiet retirement community in northwest Tucson, where she was known as an expert quilter who liked to pop by friends' houses with her homemade lemon curd.
Schneck headed to the Safeway on Saturday to meet Giffords. Though Schneck was a Republican, she had recently listened to Giffords on a conference call and hoped to shake her hand.
Schneck's friends remembered her as a kind and caring neighbor. She had run a women's club in New Jersey and became active in her Presbyterian church in Tucson — often donating her handmade aprons and needlepoint projects to benefit food banks and children's charities. One neighbor saw her recently at a neighborhood luau where she arrived in a green floral muumuu, with her famous pineapple upside-down cake.
Her world revolved around her three children, seven grandchildren, 2-year-old great-grandchild and her husband, who was the brother of her childhood best friend. Schneck once did administrative work at Fairleigh Dickinson University, but was mainly devoted to raising her children and her community work, said her daughter Betty-Jean Offutt.
The kitchen was the center of activity in the Schneck home, her daughter said. Ernie, who worked as a sheet metal fabricator in New Jersey, was always home at 5 o'clock so he wouldn't miss Phyllis' cooking. "When the food is good, you go home," said Offutt, who described her mother's macaroni and cheese as "top shelf."
Ernie and Phyllis Schneck shared a sharp sense of humor and often bowled together. They spent summers in a small lakeside community in New Jersey, Offutt said. Ernie died of cancer several years ago.
"They had a wonderful, happy marriage for 56 years," Offutt said, adding that her mother "would give you the shirt off her back. If you didn't have anywhere to go, she'd invite you over to dinner."
Maeve Reston
The East Coast winters drove Phyllis Schneck, 79, and her husband, Ernie, to Arizona a decade ago. The couple, who met as teens in New Jersey, spent the final years of a 56-year marriage in a quiet retirement community in northwest Tucson, where she was known as an expert quilter who liked to pop by friends' houses with her homemade lemon curd.
Schneck headed to the Safeway on Saturday to meet Giffords. Though Schneck was a Republican, she had recently listened to Giffords on a conference call and hoped to shake her hand.
Schneck's friends remembered her as a kind and caring neighbor. She had run a women's club in New Jersey and became active in her Presbyterian church in Tucson — often donating her handmade aprons and needlepoint projects to benefit food banks and children's charities. One neighbor saw her recently at a neighborhood luau where she arrived in a green floral muumuu, with her famous pineapple upside-down cake.
Her world revolved around her three children, seven grandchildren, 2-year-old great-grandchild and her husband, who was the brother of her childhood best friend. Schneck once did administrative work at Fairleigh Dickinson University, but was mainly devoted to raising her children and her community work, said her daughter Betty-Jean Offutt.
The kitchen was the center of activity in the Schneck home, her daughter said. Ernie, who worked as a sheet metal fabricator in New Jersey, was always home at 5 o'clock so he wouldn't miss Phyllis' cooking. "When the food is good, you go home," said Offutt, who described her mother's macaroni and cheese as "top shelf."
Ernie and Phyllis Schneck shared a sharp sense of humor and often bowled together. They spent summers in a small lakeside community in New Jersey, Offutt said. Ernie died of cancer several years ago.
"They had a wonderful, happy marriage for 56 years," Offutt said, adding that her mother "would give you the shirt off her back. If you didn't have anywhere to go, she'd invite you over to dinner."
Maeve Reston
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