12/5/2021 - Dale Jansen. I've been putting off writing this for no other reason than - I wasn't ready. But, here it goes. And note this is being written more like a journal, so I'm skipping my high school grammar and college creative writing learning (somewhat), which is a pretty handy disclaimer.

You can never do justice to someone's life in written form. Not even close. But you can try. Angie had the nerves of steel required to help move things along, including the heart-gripping write up for Mary Anne's obituary. But on this - I'll take my time and keep it pretty casual.

As the late Paul Harvey would say, “…now, for the rest of the story.”

But of course, this is just a snippet of things about Mary Anne's life, from the perspective of her husband, me. So, definitely not the rest of the story - just some things that come to mind now, right now, that I would like to share with you.

Some words and phrases to help frame this conversation: Fearless, family, friends, loyal, adventure, take the reins, artist, religion, worldly, news junkie, approachable.

Now mind you - this is not in any order. If it was, family would be first.

I have so many stories for this one - but I'll just talk about a few.

Mary Anne and I went whitewater rafting down the New River in West Virginia way back in 1998. Two typical Mary Anne fearless things happened that day. Now, you have to picture this: I was exhausted from driving down from Michigan the day before, probably from working too many hours previously, and way too tired to drive down the mountain to the New River rafting staging location. The other problem was that it was extremely foggy that morning, you couldn't really see the truck ahead of you (it was mostly delivery trucks out at early hours). I could barely keep my eyes open - so Mary Anne drove to the staging location. I remember waking up here and there to bumpy driving down the mountain and being on road's edge, delivery trucks hogging the road, some close calls, but I figured - better to get what sleep I could. Well, we made it there - nerves frayed a tad, but we made it. Today - I might have said, forget it. I remember the fog being so bad, we were lucky we didn't end up off the side of the mountain. Now once we got there, we registered, and joined a group of four other rafters, the main guide and an assistant.

The trip was NOT uneventful - there were a few mishaps, and this would not be the last time we went down a river that was faster moving than usual due to previous storms. Every time something happened, including one time the raft was airborne for a few seconds - Mary Anne was all into it and just taking it in stride. Note in the photo here - this was probably one of the smoother parts of the deal (click on the photo to zoom in). Thankfully we were all tethered to the raft. The only thing that really didn't sit well with Mary Anne on the entire trip - this poor lady was hit in the head by a cooler that cut loose when we went airborne. She was ok, but Mary Anne was more worried about her than the fact that this trip did not at all seem very routine. Just in case you are wondering, it was still fun!

In 2016 we went zip lining in Ohio: https://youtu.be/bc_JBn20gI4. This was something Mary Anne had thought about doing for years, so she finally said something like “we're going”. She planned the trip and away we went. This trip included lots of kayaking and hiking as well, but for Mary Anne, the highlight was the zip lining. The reason I included this in the fearless section - even as far back as 2016, Mary Anne's knees were giving her major trouble. But from her standpoint, no junky knee could get in the way of another adventure - so “fearless” was the way she forged ahead, body be damned. Mary Anne always planned on going again, and especially wanted to treat the grandkids to a zip line trip. Her new knees were doing pretty good these last few months, and on more than one occasion she talked about planning another zip lining trip. If you listen carefully in the video, Mary Anne was already making friends with the other zip liners. That was her way!

Grandkids - well, they were number one! But to understand how Mary Anne felt about family, you have to talk about her dad, John Stora. He really paved the way for Mary Anne on the family front. One slice of conversation is about how John would bring the greater family together multiple times a year for a party at the farm. We've reminisced many times over the years how we all missed the farm - but what we really missed was the get togethers and especially Mary Anne thought the grandkids would have loved this place. John was always planning the next family outing or dinner (or next five). Fast forward to the last handful of years, Mary Anne was much the same way, but without the farm as a meeting place. Mary Anne was already planning on the next trip with the kids, and especially wanted the next big thing to be zip lining, but there were more art projects and crafts in the works. As I've been going room to room trying to figure out the best way to organize and catalog things, I've been finding all kinds of materials for next projects - some of them definitely with the kids. Mary Anne often said she really enjoyed working on projects with the kids' other grandma.

Mary Anne cast a wide net on the friends front. She communicated frequently with her friend from the Meijer years, and her more recent employment with Wedel netted a close knit group of friends as well and they all stayed in contact, made crazy conversation at breakfast once in awhile (no doubt probably laughing until they drop). Mary Anne even became close with the lady who did her nails. More recently, Mary Anne took up walking the dog with a group in the neighborhood - and now yet another set of friends! The last few years Mary Anne and I had very casually talked about whether we should consider moving to find something without so many stairs - but the more we got to know the neighbors, the less attractive the idea of moving became. The last time the subject came up, we dropped the idea of moving - in large part (or maybe entirely) because the circle of friends, thanks to Mary Anne, includes our neighbors.

One thing that always amused Mary Anne was that strangers would strike up conversations with her. Without any encouragement or prying, people would begin sharing some of their life story with her. It's been that way as long as I can remember. And not just a Michigan thing - the same thing happened even on our frequent trips to Topsail Island.

For Mary Anne, loyalty was deep and fierce for family and friends, but extended beyond that in the form of loyalty to the the idea of truth and honesty, loyalty to integrity as a human being. Before and after her trips to El Sitio, El Salvador (Saint Catherine has a sister parish there), she would talk about the history of how the peoples' plight came to be, including the involvement of the United States (making things worse, of course). It's a history I was not aware of, and with only a little digging into historical facts, it's pretty obvious that the US was on the wrong side of history and this was perpetuated through two US presidencies, one Democrat and one Republican. So yes, Mary Anne's loyalty could be felt by family and friends (and her husband!), but it extended way beyond that, into simple ideals of right and wrong, and that as privileged people on this earth, we needed to do something about the plight of the less fortunate. And yes, she would have protected her grandkids with her life!

Some time in 1995, we camped in or near Shenandoah National Park (Mary Anne would remember the details, I got the date by looking up electronic receipts, which is kind of pathetic). On one of the days we hiked the Blue Ridge Parkway, and managed to eek out a few adventures. One that I remember clearly was part of the trail on a very tall hill (or small mountain, take your pick), where we should have had some equipment or at least walking sticks, plus a first aid kit probably would've been nice. It was so steep and treacherous - this one section seemed way out of place for the rest of the trail. Mary Anne loved it. I took photos - but they are all on slides buried away in the basement. This scanned slide from decades ago on a non-slide scanner is all I could find on the computer. I might look some of these up and crack open my slide scanner - it was gorgeous around there.

Mary Anne had a tendency to take charge in situations where things seemed to be going nowhere or where quick decisions needed to be made. Over the years this ranged from medical situations where quick thinking was needed, to taking charge in a work situation where things and events seemed to be fumble bumbling along. I may expand this section eventually, there are a few stories that I would like to tell, but I'm not sure these should be in the public realm. I maintain a private family scrapbook site with my sister - some of these stories might be better behind some authentication. Sorry! Point is, Mary Anne would step in when the situation seemed to call for it. I think more than a little bit of John Stora influence might be at play here (John is her dad).

My sister said it best describing Mary Anne's artwork as “…colorful and full of emotion…”. What you see here is a sampling of oil paintings, although the one with the butterfly might have been latex, it had a different texture to it. I've mentioned over the years that I wanted to display these around the house, but Mary Anne was having none of it. The one with the dog looking in the window at the two cats - that's actually displayed at my sister's house…but - some day soon a copy of it will be displayed in the living room (don't worry Pam, you keep the original!). Mary Anne's art extended way beyond paintings and drawings. She was always planning on the next art project with the grandkids. The most recent is displayed on this web page (see grandkids holding up the dog paintings): Photos. Over the years she has created objects ranging from wool purses to blankets, with a sprinkling of wool gnomes for good measure.

John and Delores Stora (Mary Anne's parents) were founding members of Saint Catherine of Siena in Portage. They attended this church before it actually had its first physical plant on Centre Avenue. Back then, the first mass was held at a junior high school in Portage. Saint Catherine was so important to John that when he was looking at new houses many years ago (his house in Portage was only a few blocks from Saint Catherine), one of his criteria was the driving time from the new house to church. Once he found the house that seemed to fit the bill, he drove from there to Saint Catherine - and did the “thumbs up” on how long it took to get there. For many years, we attended 7:30a Sunday mass with John and Dolores, and after Dolores passed on, many more years with John. We were married in this church. I'm bringing in this little history tidbit to help describe the foundation of faith that extended from Mary Anne's parents, especially John, to Mary Anne. We have not attended mass at Saint Catherine since the pandemic started, instead opting for virtual viewing, which is a poor substitute at best. It was only a few days before Mary Anne passed on that we talked of finally attending mass in person, masked up of course. When I talked about this with father Ben, he seemed a little surprised that we had been staying away that long - and of course he strongly encouraging me to get back with the church physically (I will, eventually). Over the years, we attended mass at churches while out of town. Mary Anne's favorite (I think!) was the Catholic church on Topsail Island, in Surf City. I couldn't remember the name of the church, but after a little Googling, it looks like we attended All Saints church. What Mary Anne especially liked about this church was the diversity of folks attending, and it was always very crowded. Obviously lots of vacationers as well as locals.

Added 12/26/2021.

Mary Anne made two pilgrimages to El Sitio in El Salvador and was talking of eventually making a third, to a community of our sister parish there. While she would talk often about the history that lead to their current situation, what drew Mary Anne to this place was the people, and especially the young adults and double especially the kids. Her Spanish was pretty remedial, but she didn't seem to have too much difficulty communicating with them. One of my favorite photos is of Mary Anne sitting at a table with a bunch of kids around. When Mary Anne talked about the kids there - it was pretty obvious that she had a special connection with them. The other photos below are from gifts Mary Anne received from the family she stayed with - all free hand embroidery (my iPhone snaps don't do them must justice, although you can see more detail after clicking through to more resolution).

I plan to expand this section eventually. Mary Anne had an awareness of things far beyond our life in Kalamazoo. It rather goes hand in hand with her stature as a news junkie.

Mary Anne and I agreed on most things to do with politics, science, news consumption, etc. You would think that might make for boring conversations, but not true. There were subtle differences, and that would spice up our conversations. But on the things that really mattered, we had a similar mindset. Mary Anne started and ended her day with local and national news and missing a few days of news would not sit well with her. But…and this might surprise some, she got passionate and even angry at the obvious misinformation from anything to do with social media and certain media outlets, and even more angry that people believed this stuff! She would sometimes yell at the TV when an elected official or “personality” was spewing obvious trash and lies - it was a side of her that sometimes caught even me by surprise. And - more often than not, I completely agreed with her. It was almost like the news became that football game where the ref obviously screwed up…

This is another section that I'll have to expand on. I've mentioned elsewhere on this page - people would strike up conversations with Mary Anne out of the blue…at a grocery store, at the park, in the neighborhood, or pretty much anywhere on vacation. Some would begin spilling their life story, or at least some abridged version. That NEVER happened to me or anyone else I know. Mary Anne took it in stride - but often said that it has been like that for years - at least as many years as I've known her.