Katie died. She was just another old lady who recently moved from a rest home in Oro Valley into hospice care and then peacefully slipped away. I only knew her for a while. After we parted ways I'd see her from time to time and we would greet each other and laugh and smile and remember. Now
she is gone so it won't happen again. But she is one of those people everyone remembers.
Katie was a Yooper and very proud of it. She loved being from Michigan and she made sure you knew it. When she went 'back home' each summer it was to visit her family and friends on the Upper Peninsula. She was wonderful self reliant and in her the quality had a specialness that made you smile. I first met her when I volunteered at Teen Challenge. She let me know right away that she ran the kitchen on Tuesdays and Thursdays and nobody messed with her or how she did it. Her boys, which is how she referred to the residents of the Teen Challenge program,either did what she asked or got an earful that might even end up having them banned from her kitchen. Every Tuesday and Thursday a truck would leave the Tucson Center and pick up out of date groceries at various grocery stores and then get unloaded into the kitchen of the Center and Katie would go to work sorting and organizing. She would bark out orders
of what should be saved and what should be thrown away. All the drug addicts, who might have been tough guys out on the street, took orders from little old Katie and did exactly what she told them to do without complaint. She didn't tolerate slackers and she ran a tight ship. If someone wanted to throw away a tomato that had a bit of mold on it the poor slob would get a ten minute lecture on how you cut the moldy part off and how back in the Depression you would have been thrilled to have a tomato with a bit of mold on it and how the modern generation was a bunch of spoiled brats and she might even remind that poor guy that before he came into the program he was probably eating out of dumpsters instead of getting three delicious meals every day so he should just stop whining and say thank you. The whole time she gave this lecture she would be waving her chef knife around. The people who had been at Teen
Challenge awhile learned to just say, "Yes, ma'am." and keep moving.
Katie had her chef knife. It was her knife. Nobody touched it. She brought it with her when she came and made sure she had it with her when she left to go home. Normally she took the bus to her apartment but as she got older she would accept a ride home. I took her home numerous times and she would ask a million questions and give you her opinion on
anything and everything. The whole time that knife sat on her lap. When she got animated she would pick up the knife and wave it around while she talked. I don't know if they will bury that knife with her, but they should.
Sometimes she would have a box of food for herself and she would make sure you took it up to her apartment for her and then you had to set it on her kitchen counter and unpack it and put the food away and then go say hello to her birds chirping away in their cage and maybe change a light bulb or tighten a bolt or dust the chandelier and only then would
she let you leave.
After Katie had her boys put all the food away at the Center she would start cooking. She made lunch with sandwiches and soup. She made meat and potatoes and more vegetables for dinner. She would make sure there was a table full of sweets because the guys loved sweets. Katie's soups were full of half rotted vegetables and which ever meat was oldest and had to be used up. They were amazing soups. I would be in my office counseling the guys and she would knock on the door and come barging in with a small bowl and a spoon and have me taste the soup and tell her
what it needed. She said, "You are a good cook, pastor Rod, you can always tell me what it needs." I'd take a couple bites and tell her it might need some basil or some salt or that it could always use more garlic. After a while she would say, "What does this need besides garlic?" It became our standard inside joke. Every time I add some garlic to a recipe I think about Katie standing in front of my desk
waiting for me to tell her what the soup needed.
The day came when Katie retired. She told us that she was moving further north and that it would be too long of a bus trip to come to the center. We offered to come get her but she said she was tired and needed to retire. We had a big banquet in her honor. I cooked the meal and made sure there was lots of garlic in the soup. I remember when she hugged me and thanked me for the wonderful dinner and then with a mischievous grin whispered, "The soup could have used some oregano... and a bit more garlic."
A month later she was back in the kitchen barking orders. She was tired of being retired. Those old people in the retirement home were way to self centered and slow moving for her taste. They needed to get off their butts and do something. She wasn't about to sit around any more. Besides, her boys needed her. Who would keep them from throwing perfectly good tomatoes out if she didn't come help? That said, she did stop coming on Tuesdays because it was a bit too much to come both days. She didn't lift anything or carry anything or try to outwork her boys. She even got to the point where she would sit on a stool to pare
potatoes. But, hey, when you are in your late eighties it is okay to slow down a bit.
I left Teen Challenge as the Village grew, but every once in a while I would stop back on a Thursday and listen to Katie complain about spoiled kids now days who waste perfectly good vegetables that have just a little brown spot on them. She would tell me how hard it was to teach
her boys to be grateful and that she really should retire because her back hurt and she needed to stay off her feet. I don't know when she actually stopped coming to the Center. I know they held another retirement dinner for her at some point but she kept showing up anyway.
She died Friday. At the big banquet God is preparing, I hope they let her chop some mold off of some vegetables and put a little extra garlic in the soup.
Rod | 
