December 26, 1915 – June 4, 2001
OBITUARY
Louise J. Albright, 85, died June 4th 2001 at her home in Phoenix. The oldest child of the Reverend Harry and Esther (Kail) Rothrock, Louise was born in 1915 in Grand Rapids, OH. She grew up in several towns in Ohio, moving as her father a Methodist minister took new posts. She graduated from Western College for Women in Oxford. OH. She later became a high school teacher in Republic, OH. There she met and married Don Albright, a farmer and race horse trainer, and they raised five children.
In the 1960’s the family moved to Defiance, OH. Louise became a high school librarian and earned a master’s degree in library science at Kent State University. Later she served as a librarian at South High School in Cleveland.
While in Cleveland she began a lifelong involvement with the Institute of Cultural Affairs, a nonprofit organization devoted to human development throughout the world. In the following decades with the ICA, she lived for five years each in England and Australia and later at the ICA’s western district offices in Los Angeles and Phoenix .
Louise loved reading music travel and spending time with her grandchildren. She is preceded in death by her brother Alan; she is survived by her sister Ruth of Orlando FL a brother Robert and his wife of Whittier CA and her five children: Rosemary of Chicago, IL; Jay Albright and Barbara Bates of Columbus, OH ;Susan Albright and husband Richard Knuth of Minneapolis, MN; Thomas Albright and wife Kaye of Akron, OH; and Sarah Hays and husband William of Billings, Montana, and five grandchildren
MEMORIES
In thinking about Mom, we’ve been thinking about the extraordinary years her life spanned. When she was to be born on a December night in 1915, her father had to put his wife Esther in a buggy and drive through a blizzard to a nearby town to see a doctor who was a stranger to him. Their own physician had just treated a patient with smallpox and thought it unsafe to deliver a baby. Between then and now – 1915 to 2001 – there have been two world wars, a depression, several technological revolutions and the beginning of a Millennium.
Mom changed right along with the changing times, moving from teacher to librarian, from typewriter to word processor. She was a lifelong learner before those words became education jargon. As a newlywed on a farm whose house had sat vacant for many years, she learned to cook on a coal stove and do laundry in a tub – skills many had left behind by the 1940s.
Later came courses in furniture refinishing, upholstering, library science and wood sculpturing. There were elder hostile trips either alone or with her sister Ruth. Mom’s most audacious class, which mortified our little sister Sarah who was in the throes of high school self-consciousness at the time, was a class in outer body work. She sanded filled and prepped our 1970 fire engine red Cheville in the family garage of Sarah’s boyfriend. It was ultimately painted by vocational students at the school where she was a librarian.
Soon after a worldwide trip with our sister Sara in 1974, it led to 10 years abroad with the ICA. Once back home there was no less to learn. In 1988 when the ICA moved its western offices from Los Angeles to Phoenix, Mom immediately enrolled in a Community College course on the ecology of the Sonoran Desert. I remember tracking down a couple of newspaper articles for her research which led to an impressive paper on the effects of air pollution on saguaros. She didn’t let logistics stop her either: she took a city bus to the class; but Phoenix evening buses stopped running before the class was over. No problem, she got rides home with her instructor
Mom was an inveterate reader. Trips to the library were always at the top of her To Do List. She was so focused in the middle of a book that as children we’d engage in outrageous conversations well within her earshot, hoping to distract her. But it didn’t work. Mom told me not long ago that she was intellectually lonely during her first years in Republic until new family moved to a nearby farm. She met a soul mate in Florence Hoppel, a great reader herself and whose kids became great friends of ours.
Mom and Dad ran a relaxed and welcoming household where friends would skate on our pond, play in the barn or play bridge, Euchre or Scrabble while eating popcorn and drinking dad’s homemade cider. When Tom and I were in high school, his friend from down the street would come over to spend time at our home where no mom would yell at him for touching the furniture. The prospect of finger prints was the farthest thing from Mom’s mind. As we kids hung out, she was likely reading or cooking or studying for one of her University of Chicago correspondent courses in library science or perhaps listening to classical music or watching Meet the Press. Mom cared about what was happening in the world. Her life was steeped in the social justice concepts of the New Testament; and work with ICA was a natural extension of that commitment
What did all of this mean for her children? There’s clearly some of her in all of us. We all play cards – some better than others. The reading quotient is pretty high. Rosemary has worked with the ICA for many years, spending five of them teaching preventive health in Kenya. Jay became a bridge player extraordinaire and usually can’t be beaten in Scrabble. Tom is a fine musician and chef; and Sara became active in the Methodist Church, engaging in mission work trips with their children to far-flung places including a reservation in New Mexico and colleges in Mississippi and Missouri. As for me, I spent two years as a librarian myself and my own inveterate reading clearly affected my choice of a journalism career.
We all like to travel and learn, a tradition being kept alive by several adventurous grandchildren including Vickie who taught English in Japan for five years and Chris who teaches 4th and 5th grade in a village in Alaska (and who as I speak is travelling with students in Europe). Sally Ann will also be a teacher; she is studying at Montana State University
Mom was an independent sort — one might even say headstrong. It seems her extended offspring are headed in that independent inquiry and adventurous direction. Perhaps for me that represents her legacy: learning and growing. This week, as she planned yet another trip, she was living that legacy right down to her last sunset.
~~ Susan Albright