Alice B Reiss

Alice was born on April 22, 1909, in Osseo, Wisconsin, to farmer-merchants Eric and Mary Hagen. By the evening of her death, nearly 105 years later, Alice had experienced horse-drawn transportation and gasoline, hybrid, and hydrogen powered engines; air transportation; telegraph, hand-cranked telephone, radio, television, Smart phones, the Internet; two World Wars and numerous revolutions and conflicts; penicillin and polio vaccine; polyester; plastic; the Great Depression, recessions and recoveries; jet engines; satellites, space stations, rockets, man walking on the surface of the moon.

Alice took in the world. Travel was one of her passions; and she filled her life, and the lives of her children and husbands, with adventures. From her first cross-country pre-paved highway automobile trip at age 15 with her father to her last ocean cruise with her husband, Alice saw nearly every state in the United States and nearly every continent, viewing the art and culture of her fellow world inhabitants from the back of a camel, the stern of a fishing boat, the peak of a cathedral, or the deck of an ocean liner. And she walked and walked, anywhere and everywhere, through city streets, in mountain forests, and finally every day to visit her lumbering desert turtle friend Bruno.

Following years in Wisconsin, in the early ‘70's Alice discovered and moved to her beloved Scottsdale where she would no longer shovel the snow of the Wisconsin winter. Alice settled in to her Western life enjoying a wide circle of friends, including a not insignificant number of similarly relocated Wisconsinites.

Long life gave Alice children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and a great great-grandchild who have embraced their own lives with a vitality and diversity that only could have been inherited from her. Photographers, author, smokejumper, pilot, speech pathologist, realtors, sailors, teachers, musicians, mountain climbers, hunters, urban planner, accountant–their occupations and avocations are emblematic of Alice’s wide-ranging interests and indefatigable enthusiasm. She likewise shared her passions with her three noble and gentle husbands whom she outlived--Aaron Lois Lenmark, the father of her children; and Judd Burns and Robert Reiss, both beloved stepfathers and stepgrandfathers in Alice’s family.

Bidding Alice safe passage on her next journey are daughter Maryalice LeDuc-Lenmark and son Peter O. Lenmark; grandchildren Kelly Bauman Boles, Christine Lenmark Trefzger, Paul Aaron Lenmark, and Bradley LeDuc-Lenmark; great-grandchildren Forrest, Garrett, and Belleaire Boles (Kelly), Jack and Lucas Trefzger (Christine), and Peter and Ezra Lenmark (Paul); great great-grandchild Cale (Forrest); nephew Edward Nelson, great nieces Robin Decker and Sue Maki, and cousin-in-law Rick Carlson; and her extended family of caregivers at Weyrich Health Care Center and from Senior Bridge.

Alice is predeceased by her parents Eric and Mary Hagen; sisters Mabel (“Tot”) Nelson and Margaret (“Mike”) Dodmead; brothers Ralph and Henry Hagen; husbands Aaron Lenmark, Judd Burns, and Robert Reiss; and nieces Harriet Litchfield and Mary Jo Carlson and nephew James Dodmead.

Gifts in Alice’s memory may be made to Weyrich Health Care Center, c/o Westminster Village Foundation & Assistance Funds, 12000 North 90th Street, Scottsdale, Arizona 85260, (480) 451-2000.