Rose Marie Noye-Kanzler

November 21, 1926 - September 3, 2016

Memoirs of Rose Marie Noye-Kanzler Born on November 21, 1926 at their farm home near the town of Charter Oak, Iowa, to Henry and Teresa (Hanneman) Rosburg. She was the fifth child, after three brothers and one sister – the oldest brother, Fred, was born in 1906. The family was torn apart after her father drowned and her mother had a complete mental breakdown when Rose was only two years old. Her Uncle Carl and Aunt Frieda Hanneman took care of her until brother Fred married, and he and his wife (Adelia) took her in to live with them. She was part of their family as they began having their own children – like having her own brothers! Fred and Adelia made sure that she attended Sunday School and went through Confirmation classes at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Dunlap. This went on until she was 13, when they moved to another farm community, and decided she should stay with some neighbors to continue public education as a freshman at Dunlap High School. This was the start of being adopted by the generous people of that little town of 1,500. The first three years she lived with an almost-blind lady, the home being near the high school. Rose Marie would help her cook, clean and run errands. But going to high school was fun! She participated in all the activities possible – such as girl’s basketball, the glee club singing group, one-act plays, etc. During the summer she would stay with a farm family, and help with the gardening, cleaning and cooking for the threshing crew – and then back to school again. Her senior year was different. Rose Marie shared a room with another senior girl in another lady’s home near the high school. She took a job at the town newspaper office after school and on Saturdays. It was a job of setting type (hot lead to create columns of print for the newspaper press), among many other duties. In the evenings, she would work at the town theater selling tickets or popcorn. Yet through all this adversity, she completed high school and graduated Salutatorian of her class, with a small scholarship grant to Grand Island, Nebraska business college. But the idea of going to a school in Nebraska didn’t interest Rose Marie. She chose to go to California to visit her older sister, who, with husband and family, were living in Santa Monica. This was a sister she hardly knew because her family had been so torn apart during their childhood. They had a nice home just thirteen blocks from the ocean! She found work at the Saks Fifth Avenue store in Beverly Hills, working in the stock room. It was fun to see the celebrities come in and try on clothes in the dressing rooms. Then, for a while, Rose Marie decided to take on work at a nearby factory because it paid more money. In the meantime, her sister and husband were making plans to move to Oregon. They soon sold their house and were gone. Rose Marie stayed a while longer in California, but eventually made the move to Oregon, too. After settling in Oregon City, she found office work at Globe Union Battery Factory. About that time she met the man she was to marry – Harry Noye. They had three children, a daughter and two sons, who attended schools in Gladstone. They were wed and built their first home around their new family on Berkley Street in Gladstone. Rose Marie diligently nurtured the children, while also helping her husband manage his automobile mechanic and gas station business on McLoughlin Boulevard. She would occasionally boast that, not knowing the ‘standard’ margin for per-gallon gas pricing, unintentionally advertised their prices way below market and started a gas war from Oregon City, all the way into Portland! In 1957 she decided to take on accounting work at Publishers Paper Company in Oregon City, working in the Timber Department. In 1961, the couple took their family out of the town setting and built their second home on Dagmar Road – somewhat between Gladstone, Clackamas and Milwaukie. This semi-rural setting with forested property on both sides of the road allowed the children to thrive in a healthier and more natural environment. In 1970, her husband had a fatal heart attack and left the family to go it alone. Rose Marie continued working at Publishers Paper Company and managed to make ends meet, keep the house, provide the children with all their basic needs, and send them on through higher education. Rose Marie married her second husband, Leslie Mortensen, in 1974. This marriage was short-lived, and they parted company a few years later, in 1978. Unencumbered by those pesky husbands, in 1979 she hooked up with a good friend, Esther Bush, and took cruise ship tour up the Inland Passage to Alaska, visiting Juneau, Ketchikan, Glacier Bay, and other interesting ports. A few years later, in 1983, she partnered with Leta Menken on a sojourn to Mexico City. There she observed some extreme contrasts – the cathedrals lined with gold, while the extremely poor people on the streets begged for money. And to her end, this inequity bothered her. It was because of this she established a trust with a Lutheran Church evangelical foundation, that now on her passing, the entire fund will be distributed by the church to the needy. The period between 1985 and 1988 Rose Marie trained and acquired multiple life insurance, health insurance, and securities licenses. She worked during this time for Waddell & Reed Investments, but eventually lost interest, and decided it was time to retire. Rose Marie sold the large Dagmar family home in 1989 and downsized to a comfortable 2-bedroom house in the Summerplace community in Northeast Portland. About a year later, a neighbor friend mentioned that she was going to join a travel tour group with their sights on Europe – would Rose Marie be interested? Soon thereafter, they were on a plane to Dallas, Texas, then to New York, and overnight to London, accumulating about fifty people in the group along the way. After sightseeing in London, they crossed the channel to the mainland, and toured the continent by bus through France, Germany, Austria, Italy and Switzerland. This was the trip of her lifetime - never to be forgotten. In 1992 she sold her Summerplace home and moved into a brand-new double-wide manufactured home atop Oregon City in the Country Village community. About that same time, she married Herman Kanzler, a friendly Summerplace community neighbor, and settled in Oregon City. As fate would have it, he suffered a major stroke on the third day of their honeymoon, and was 80% incapacitated for a year or so. Herman’s health failed drastically again after a serious fall, and was bedridden in Mountain View Rehab. & Care Center for years, unable to walk and hardly able to communicate. This period was another testimony to the character and strength that Rose Marie possessed. With very few exceptions, she was at the care facility for hours every single day – many times the entire day, or multiple visits. She would provide him company, tend to feeding – and due to the facility’s understaffed conditions – take care of unmentionable clean-up chores. Most of us would find excuses to provide ourselves with ‘vacation’ periods, and during the times we are there, stay at an arm’s length from the unthinkable clean-up tasks. But not this woman. Without question, it was her Christian duty as a wife to take care of her husband, no matter what the circumstances, and she carried out those tasks for years without falter or complaints, until his passing in June of 2002. Eventually the maintenance and landscape labors of home ownership became more than she wanted to deal with, so she sold the place and moved on to Homewoods, an adult community in Jennings Lodge on the Willamette River. Her stay there was brief - from one apartment to a second in that location, then on to a rental house in West Linn. That lasted for about six months, until she decided to move back closer to her friends and church atop Oregon City hill to an apartment complex called Murray Woods. Throughout this last five years of lifestyle changing, Rose Marie was also experiencing a new facet of her life - the onset of memory loss and cognitive degeneration…. dementia. So in September of 2009, the family and Rose Marie agreed it would be best to move into Avamere at Berry Park (Oregon City), an adult living community. There she found new friends and enjoyed a lifestyle where everything was taken care of for her - meal preparation, apartment cleaning, laundry, entertainment, bus tours, etc. She thrived in this environment until 2013, when she took a tumble, broke her hip and had to have three screws inserted to pull her leg back into shape. Following her surgery, she spent three weeks in rehab, and upon release, was directed by doctor's orders to move into an assisted living center. Fortunately, Avamere at Sandy welcomed her in, and she thoroughly loved that warm environment for three years, scooting around the facility with her 'Hot Wheels' walker, attending Avamere-sponsored social events, mini-concerts, in-house church, and tour-bus outings. All was well until this year, when her age and the progression of Alzheimer's disease caught up with her, and Rose Marie succumbed to a couple of infections that resulted in hospital stays. The first time she was strong enough to rebound to her health baseline and return to Avamere. The second time, almost a year later, she couldn't find the strength as before, and was compelled to endure another rehab center stay with a physical therapy regimen to build back her strength. But, at an age just two months shy of 90, her iron-will makeup couldn't push her frail body any more. She no longer had strength and balance for her walker, and basically lived in a wheelchair or bed from this point on. Once again, those wonderful people at Avamere accepted Rose Marie back into her familiar Sandy, Oregon surrounds, but this time, recognizing that her needs were much greater than before, made a place for her in the extended care wing of the facility. Here she was tended to by loving and caring attendants in a beautiful, peaceful, and quiet environment - back at her Avamere home - for her final nine days. Rose Marie was not in pain or discomfort when she drew her last breath, ending her life’s journey at 8:40, Saturday morning, September 3.