Bernie Ruth Symank

Bernie Ruth Walther Symank, 95, of Houston, Texas, passed peacefully into eternal life on November 19, 2025. Born on April 12, 1930, in Lincoln (Lee County), Texas, Bernie took her place as the fifth of ten children of Willie Paul and Hattie (Symmank) Walther. She was baptized on April 27, 1930, at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Lincoln, where she later was educated, confirmed in the Christian faith in 1944, and united in marriage to Herman John Symank of Giddings, Texas on September 28, 1952.

Before Herman’s passing in 2022, he and Bernie celebrated an extraordinary 70 years of marriage, a milestone rarely reached without a foundation of commitment, partnership, and determination based on the sanctity of the union and a shared faith in God. They were blessed with six children, each of whom was a source of immense pride and joy. Bernie always encouraged the children to be their best, but never asked them to be anything other than who they were--two builders, a restauranteur, an artist, a teacher and an oil man.

Bernie was conceived in the best of times, the Roaring Twenties, and born into the worst of times, the Great Depression, 165 days after the Black Thursday stock market crash of October 24, 1929. She came into the world in the bedroom of a simple wood framed farmhouse, with no electricity or indoor plumbing. There was an outhouse out back and a wood fired stove for cooking. Bernie was nine when electricity came to the farm by way of the Rural Electrification Act of 1936. “Having electric lights was nice,” she said, “but the best part was not having to refill the kerosene lanterns and clean the sooty glass globes.” You’d think the farmers would have welcomed the modernization, but she remembered that some farmers fought the installation of power poles in their fields.

It wasn’t until Bernie was eighteen and had moved away that her dad built a second, more modern house on the farm, with an indoor bathroom and wiring for electricity. The family got an electric stove. The old wood stove was moved to the new house and installed in the kitchen and used as the house’s only heater. Old ways are slow to die.

Bernie and all nine of her siblings were born at home. She was fascinated with babies. When her mom gave birth to one of her younger brothers or sisters during the night, Bernie was at her bedside in the morning stroking the baby’s head. Her mother pointed out that it was a school day and she needed to get ready to go. “I’m not going to school today,” she declared.

“Yes you are”…”I’m not”…”You are”…”I’m not”. She didn’t.

Bernie had a streak. It was an early display of her lifelong resolve and determination.

As with any farm family, Bernie and her two older sisters looked after the younger kids. One day after lunch -- the family walked in from working the fields for the big meal of the day -- her mom and dad walked back to the field while the kids cleaned up after the meal. Afterwards, outside, Bernie announced, “We’re not walking back; we’re driving!” She was looking after the little ones’ welfare, of course. It must have been a far piece to walk, down a dirt road and through several fences. Years later, Douglas, her oldest, asked her who drove.

“Me.”

“Not one of your older sisters?”

“No, me.”

“What? How old were you?”

“Eleven.”

“Wasn’t that a Model A? Didn’t those have a hand crank start? And a standard transmission with a clutch pedal? Could you even reach it? Had you ever driven before? How did you know what to do?”

“I watched Papa drive,” Bernie stated as though it was as simple as that. So all the younger kids climbed into the car laughing and giggling, opening and closing gates along the way until they reached the field. It became clear that afternoon that Bernie had a knack for spirited ingenuity.

“Did you get in trouble with Grandpa?”

“No, I don’t remember getting in trouble. In fact, he made me a tractor driver.”

At eleven.

Her work ethic was shaped early, toiling beside her Papa in the fields as soon as she was old enough, and helping her Mama, in no small part, raise the five siblings that followed her.

When she was eighteen, Bernie moved to Austin. Her ethics and child rearing skills so impressed Price Daniel, the Attorney General of Texas, and future Governor, and his wife, that he took her into his employ as the nanny to their three children. While there, Bernie helped raise Price Daniel, Jr, a future Speaker of the House for the Texas legislature.

Following the Daniels, based on the recommendation of that family, Bernie became the nanny for the Page family. Mr. Page was the lead partner of Page Southerland Page, a distinguished architectural firm in Austin. Her young charge, Chris Page, was six or seven at the time. Years later, when Chris was studying architecture at the University of Houston, he called Bernie’s house to ask if he could visit. This took place long before the internet provided easy access to information. Bernie was married and her last name had changed, so who knows what pains he had to take to find her. When Chris arrived, Bernie’s three older boys were playing at a neighbor’s house while she bathed baby Jeffery in the bathroom near the back of the house. Bernie didn’t hear h knock, at least that’s what she concluded from the note he left. Carrol remembers that she talked of Chris often and was sick that she missed him. Chris went on to become a partner in Page Southerland Page, now one of the largest architectural firms in the United States. What sort of an impression must she have made on a little boy to last all those years? Perhaps that’s what he wanted to tell her.

Bernie met Herman, her husband to be, on a hayride, a meeting arranged by her cousin. It led to a long-distance relationship, with Herman driving from Giddings to Austin on the weekends for dates - movies, cokes and hamburgers, and long drives in the hills outside of the city.

Bernie was created to be a mother. Her actions, both small and large, were undisputed testaments to her love for her children. She remembered every baby’s weight and time of birth, she knew where each child was at all times, and she ensured they were well cared for, even through difficult seasons. She sang to them a made-up lullaby that began with only a few sweet words before transitioning into stanzas of simple humming. She taught them their prayers and sat at their bedsides making sure that they asked God to bless all that they loved, naming each person individually. She told them about Jesus and the Holy Spirit and Heaven. Before her kids entered school, they knew colors and numbers, words and letters, and they played games that encouraged both their budding imaginations and potential intellect.

While working as a nanny with socially accomplished families, Bernie observed grace, courtesy, and refined etiquette—qualities she carried into her own home. She modeled and taught gentleness, politeness, and respect, shaping her future children not only through instruction but through her example.

Like many children of their generation, Bernie’s kids grew up in a modest home where all spaces were shared by necessity, and no square footage was available for impractical use. But that did not stop them from making tents in the dining room and building Lincoln Log farms on the floor. They raced Matchbox cars on imaginary speedways over their mom’s good living room rug, and played chase in the house, running crazily from room to room, often sliding in their socks up and down the hallway. With Bernie’s instruction, they made Christmas ornaments using salt dough and paint, turned laundry baskets and boxes into cars and rockets, and traced their silhouettes using a flashlight in the home’s darkened hallway.

The antics of six children put them underfoot, where Bernie was busy with the laundry, cleaning, cooking, and sewing necessary to care for the family of eight. Although this undoubtedly made her tasks even more challenging, she worked around the kids with an even-temper and the perfect skill and timing of a racing pit crew.

She was of course was only human, however, and on rare occasions Bernie reached her limit with the kids’ shenanigans. It was then that she would share stories of a centuries-old German character to assist her with crowd control. These traditional tales originated in Europe and were carried across the Atlantic with immigrating ancestors, telling of the German Santa Clause named Rumplich. This “Santa” figure was far from a jolly old man with rosy cheeks and a belly laugh. Instead, Rumplich appeared rather frightening. Tall and slender, he dressed in a striped outfit and wore a mask fashioned with a cow tail for a beard. He carried a long staff, perhaps simply to use as a walking stick, but many children found it intimidating instead. Bernie called him “Rumpus”, and cleverly whispered to her rambunctious children that he was asleep in the attic and he did not like being disturbed. The kids needed no more explanation as they imagined Rumpus with his mask and stick descending from the rafters to urge them to play quietly and mind their mother. Order was soon restored.

It has been suggested that all of Bernie’s children inherited her inclination for spontaneous mischief. One needs only to ask about the corn on Carrol’s teeth, or the brothers’ removal of a screen door from its hinges to fall on an unsuspecting sister. On hot evenings when the single AC unit in the dining room window was the only chance for comfort through the night, the children gathered there with pillows and spent hours making up jokes and songs. While they had all become adept at near-silent giggling, they undoubtedly kept their parents up when hushed chuckling erupted into full-blown laughter. Had Bernie been up in their midst, she likely would have joined in with zeal, an adorable shift in her otherwise busy demeanor.

Bernie’s inherent kindness and empathy did not distinguish between people and animals. Although the house was full, she could always be persuaded to feed strays and provide them shelter. She never shied away from treating scrapes, bandaging injuries, and soothing illnesses. During one uncharacteristically cold winter snap, Bernie even allowed her worried children to bring frozen baby bunnies into the kitchen to warm in the oven. One by one, each stiff tiny creature startling wiggling, and Bernie moved them to a makeshift bed by the heater to be fed warm milk with a dropper. Yvonne remembers that, for her children, Bernie took care to warm ear drops to help soothe ear infections, was gentle when applying the Vicks Vaporub to an aching chest, and never failed to produce a lollipop after doling out medicine in a home that rarely stocked sweet treats. Acting as both doctor and veterinarian, no one doubted that all would be well in Bernie’s calm, capable hands.

Bernie was also gifted with abundant creativity and well-honed skills. A self-taught seamstress and pattern designer, she was a master at sewing her own clothing along with much of that of her children. One story relates how six-year-old Donna came home from school upset after a classmate cornered her at recess and subjected her to a full-body squeeze, like a python subduing its prey. Donna had worn a newly sewn fancy dress, and the classmate wanted her to say that her mother didn’t make it because “No one can sew a dress that pretty.” Donna didn’t break that day, neither verbally nor physically, but she was more cautious during future recesses. Bernie continued sewing into her 90’s, producing countless creations—stuffed toys and dolls, handmade gifts, pillows, and of course more beautiful dresses, including Donna’s wedding dress. Every item was painstakingly cut and stitched with precision and pride, and any suggestion to let some wayward stitching slide because it was “good enough” was met with a firm shake of her head as her seam ripper began resolutely undoing the offending seams.

Bernie’s hands and mind were always at work, improving, restoring, and building. If she wasn’t sewing, she was developing her amateur engineering skills. Resourceful and determined, Bernie could dismantle, diagnose, and repair nearly any household appliance. With limited resources but limitless ingenuity, she became an electrician, carpenter, painter, and small-engine parts replacer. She even acquired her own tools on which she wrote her name with nail polish, lest anyone unwittingly misplaced her hammer or vice-grips. Ronnie can verify that, even today, her laundry room holds an electric sander, clamps, a drill, and plumber’s putty next to the Tide detergent and Clorox.

Bernie tended a lifelong, unwavering love for her children; That’s no surprise to anyone. As each baby was born, she stroked their soft heads, counted their tiny fingers, memorized their faces, and whispered in their ears about her love for and delight in them. And she watched them breathe. In and out, in and out, the little chests rising and falling. And her children learned. As Bernie neared her earthly exit, these same children stroked her head, clasped her hands with the long slender fingers, and memorized the lines of her eyes and lips and still-beautiful skin. They leaned in and told her stories of love and thank you’s and laughter and we’ll miss you’s. And they watched her breathe. In and out, in and out, quiet and peaceful, until her chest stopped moving, and Bernie was Home.

Bernie Ruth is survived by her children: Douglas (Kathy) Symank of College Station, Texas; Carrol (Cheryl) Symank of Chicago, Illinois; Ronald Symank of Houston, Texas; Yvonne Symank of Katy, Texas; and Donna (the late Michael) Hobus of Nixa, Missouri; and by her daughter-in-law, Kathryn (the late Jeffery) Symank of Cypress, Texas.

Surviving siblings include her sisters Meta (the late Paul) Krause, Della Mae (the late Herbert) Biehle, and Carolyn (the late Nelson) Friedrich. She is also survived by sisters-in-law Magdalena (the late Irwin) Iselt, Florence (Robert) Wrigley, Betty Jean (the late Elton) Walther, and Jennifer (the late Billy) Walther.

One of Bernie’s greatest earthly joys was her grandchildren: Jaclyn (Michael) Mahlmann, William Symank, Emma Symank, Cara (Michael) Parker, Christen (Andy) Huntley, Amanda (Edgardo) Lara, Amber Hobus, and Kevin (Hannah) Dobbs. She also leaves behind twelve great-grandchildren and many nieces and nephews.

Preceding her in death were her husband, Herman Symank, son, Jeffery Symank; daughter-in-law, Shari (Lewis) Symank; son-in-law, Michael Hobus; her parents, Willie and Hattie Walther; her sisters Edna Gruetzner and Elsie Gruetzner; her brothers Elmo Walther, Eddie Paul Walther, Elton Walther, and Billy Walther; her parents-in-law, John and Emma (Vogel) Symank; and several brothers- and sisters-in-law.

Visitation will be on Tuesday, December 2, from 9:30-11:00 at St. Mark Lutheran Church, 1515 Hillendahl, Houston, Texas. The memorial service will follow from 11:00-12:00. Graveside services will begin at 12:30 at Memorial Oaks Cemetery, 13001 Katy Freeway in Houston.

Serving as pallbearers are Christen Huntley, Edgardo Lara, Jackie Mahlmann, Spencer Mahlmann, Kate Parker, Luke Parker, Michael Parker, Emma Symank, and William Symank.

Honorary Pallbearers are Kevin Dobbs, Hannah Dobbs, Amber Hobus, Andy Huntley, Amanda Lara, Michael Mahlmann, and Cara Parker.

Flowers may be sent to Advantage Funeral and Cremation Services at 7010 Chetwood, Houston, Texas for the family’s care. Memorials gifts in honor of Bernie made be directed to St. Mark Lutheran Church at the address above.

I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God. Job 19: 25-26