Mrs. Lisa Murrie

by Karen Murrie Schwartz

Mom’s Memorial Service – Jan 30, 2019

Hell has certainly frozen over this week. But we do have sunshine for Mom today.

Lisa Leisten was born in Copenhagen, Denmark and raised by her mother with a significant amount of time spent with her grandparents, my Great Grandpa Jens and Great Grandma Elma. Her happiest childhood times were spent with them, her cousins Finn and Ole, and her time at the beach as a camp counselor to many young children.

At 17, she came to the U.S. with her mom and landed in Chicago where she completed her schooling and became a nurse at Edgewater Hospital.

She was nurse to a patient who came in one evening for appendicitis surgery. The next morning when she walked in to check on her patient, it was Dad who thought “that’s the girl I want to marry”.

She had learned English in Denmark, and from watching TV, and spoke with no accent (except for when she said birFday).

My Dad finally convinced my, initially uninterested, Mother to go on a double date with him and his friend Glen Emond. They went to the ballet for their 1st date and then the Blackhawk, where they drank Irish coffees, and he got her home at 3am. He had no idea that she had to get up at 5am for work.

They got engaged at the Howard Street beach when Dad asked her to marry him. Her original plan was to go home to Denmark for 6 months to think about it, she really planned to return home and not come back to the U.S. – and if she came back, they’d marry.

For the next 3 months, he wrote 120 love letters to her sent through good old fashioned air mail. Finally, her grandmother convinced her to come back.

With $700 in his checking account, Dad met her in NY for a week where they stayed at the Waldorf Astoria hotel, in 2 separate rooms, on 2 different floors, since they were not married – as it was illegal to stay together back then.

He had even gone out and bought a real man’s hat – and even though she hated it, she never told him until many years later when they reminisced about it. They wandered all over NY and had a great time!

They returned to Chicago and got married on March 18th, 1961.

They wanted 6 children but landed with the 4 of us. Linda in January of ‘62 and me right after in December. 4 years later came Jennifer, and a year and half after that Michael – finally a boy!

While Dad built a business starting in 1965, Mom became the CEO managing all of us and her household – supporting all our interests, driving us all over the place and just loving us!

Dad did have to teach Mom how to drive when they moved from the city to live on Cavell in Highland Park. When they went to see Marvin Lee’s house that they bought, she said “we have to take the dishwasher out”, she wanted to wash the dishes by hand and gain some extra shelf space. Always frugal and thinking about where everything would go. But she adapted quickly enough to that modern convenience, and thankfully never lived without a dishwasher.

Right after Michael was born, we moved to Lincoln Avenue South and settled in forever. Mom and Dad fell in love with this house and Mom created the warmest, most beautiful home ever.

This house has always been “Mom’s” – we say to each other “Are you going to Mom’s?”, “What time at Mom’s?” or “Meet me at Mom’s” because she made it that way for us.

Mom had so very many talents and was so very smart!

She cooked like a chef – her very best dishes included:

- Mushroom chicken with croutons

- Swedish pancakes on the griddle

- Black bean soup

- Danish Frikedillas with current jelly

- Curried chicken

- And she always had a jar full of pretzels for my cousin Jimmy

- She even tricked us as kids into eating liver by telling us it was veal

- She invented what I now call The Aunt Jenny, because it was one of the few things that Jenny would eat as a kid: cream cheese on toast with honey drizzled on top

- She made her Thanksgiving turkey in a brown paper bag

- Her whipped mashed potatoes with her divine gravy were like gold

- And a beef stew so special my parents would have it on New Year’s Eves

Mom could do anything – hang wallpaper, paint walls, furniture and even paintings, make drapes, seat cushions, pillows, holiday and all kinds of decorations, and even sew our clothes, she cut our hair, made our Halloween costumes and was craftier than Martha Stewart could ever be.

You may think Dad is the artist in the family, but creativity flowed from Mom to us in spades!

And no one gardened like Mom, with peonies, roses, marigolds, lily of the valley, chives, onion chives, garlic chives – I could go on and on.

Mom was a voracious reader, with books lining up the den and many rooms of the house. How smart she was about so many things, reading books, magazines, newspapers – always the Sunday morning paper reading tradition, watching documentaries – becoming smart in anything she wanted to know.

Mom always made sure we had fun and prepared us well for family vacations. We drove everywhere!! To Lake Geneva, to Lake of the Ozarks and even to Aspen – she was always prepared with a cooler of sandwiches and sodas, car games to occupy us, and all the songs we sung along the way – you guys remember all the John Denver songs? And as long as we had a pool to jump into, we were as happy as could be – even at a Holiday Inn. We did fly to California and built great memories at Disneyland, San Diego Zoo and beach, and up to Mill Valley and Stinson Beach with Tom White and his family, the Hobersons and Bob Blosser.

Our ultimate trip was to christen the house in Tuscany about 19 years ago – all of us kids, our kids and significant others. What an experience we will never forget! The food, the wine, the friends, the gorgeous Tuscan scenery. Dad took Italian lessons for years and years, but Mom picked it up in a snap – and was able to communicate, make lifelong friends and practically become a true Ascianese.

Never to be called Grandma or Grandpa, Mom and Dad took on the Italian version as Nonna and Nonno – it’s all the 7 grandchildren call them.

Mom held us tight to our family traditions at birthdays – making sure we got together to celebrate and always had cards and presents for us.

There was Easter and our Christmas was the most special time – when we were little, we had Christmas eve at Grandma and Grandpa’s in Bensenville. Our Uncle Dick was the spitting image of Santa who would come in dressed like Santa and have a bag of presents for us and our cousins, we’d hang out in the basement that had a fireplace, Aunt Nobu would drink her mint green blended Grasshopper drink, there was a round light on the bar that read BAR, and the house was in full Christmas decoration, including the leather strap with bells on it by the stairs and garage door. We would drive home and put our new PJs from Aunt Eloise and Uncle Tommy, wake up in the morning and run downstairs to the Christmas tree in the living room with all our presents – beautifully wrapped by Mom. Then the family came to our house at night for Christmas Day dinner. Mom made her Danish riced almond pudding dessert with the black cherry sauce on top – hiding one whole almond for a lucky winner to get a prize. We sang the 12 Days of Christmas around the table – she could never get the words right for the right day – but how loud and off-key we would all be shouting out the last “And a partridge in a pear tree!”

Even our recent Christmas included some of these traditions, including the family photo on the front staircase and opening up our stockings very last.

Her Danish heritage is evident in all of our homes – with the Danish flag, the Danish mailboxes, toy soldiers, the porcelain, little cut and folded snowflakes, ornaments and more – we are so proud to be Danish!

Mom didn’t just have us 4 kids – she was mother to many of our friends. Our friends thought Mom was the absolute BEST and she loved them back – Denise, Laura, Andrea, Lizette, Tommy, Ricky, Martha...the list goes on!

Mom developed her own strong relationships with many of my friends: Laura, Martha, Mara, Tracy, Cheryl, Jennifer...she knew how important you all are to me! She was equally embracing to my loves, through my marriage to Steve, and now with David – always including and inviting him, Ari and Noah to be with the family for many years now.

The memories of my parents going out most every Saturday night are so vivid. Mrs. Burgett would babysit the 4 of us – mother to her own 13 children! Mom would take a bath and put Estee Lauder perfume oil in it – the smell was intoxicatingly beautiful. Her every perfume marked special as her very own scent – her Shalimar, and her Fracas. I can close my eyes and smell her.

Bar-none, Mom’s style was very fashionable, with fully put-together outfits, makeup and her brown lipstick – something each of us have picked up in different ways – although she did always have a Kleenex stuck under her sleeve, just in case one of us had a runny nose. She may have had her strong opinions on what we wore or how we did our hair, but always supported our choices...for the most part! Her expert shopping skills were imparted on us – bargain hunting at TJ Maxx for the best deals, and even her flair for antiquing.

Although the last few weeks were so difficult, we were blessed with a little extra time to share our love with Mom, talk to her, hold her hand, kiss her cheek and sing to her – her favorite songs of ABBA, Willie Nelson, Simon & Garfunkle, The Mama’s & The Papa’s, Carol King, Vivaldi, Garth Brooks, The Traveling Wilburies. And only Mom could make family holiday clean-up fun with all of us singing music from the Big Chill to lighten up the chore.

Our beautiful, sweet, strong, tough, talented mother is at peace now. We know that she would only want to be here with the ability to express her zest for life, looking for a party or a wedding so she could be dancing, playing music loudly and singing along, traveling to Paris or London with Dad, smoking her Carltons, having a glass of Est! Est! Est! or Pinot Grigio and talking with us kids about absolutely anything and everything. She was always there for us.

We love you forever, Mom! With a heart for the O – that was her sign-off!