Janet Catherine Spence Teetor

Daughter, Sister, Friend, Wife, Mother, Aunt, Cousin, Grandmother

How do you describe someone who has had such a powerful and profound influence on so many people? Whose spirit and faith in the goodness of her family and the goodness in the world was truly a force of nature. Janet...Mom...Nina...this may simply be the happiest and most grateful individual any of us have known and loved.

Janet grew up in a very happy home. Her parents and her two brothers loved her and cherished her. Her Mother, Esta, orphaned at a delicate age and forced to shoulder responsibilities beyond her due, imparted in all her children the notion that life was meant to be lived happy. And that love and care of family was the most precious virtue. And that at all time and in all ways, one should be grateful and appreciative of every day...every breath. No one lived these virtues more than Janet.

So today we gather here in love and honor, so very sad to celebrate someone so happy.

We look around this room and in the lives of all she touched, and we see her smile in the smiles of all our family and friends. We hear the song of her voice. We feel the warmth of her touch...the embrace of her love... she is in every act of goodness that we see.

Making the preparations for today, the funeral director asked her occupation. "Homemaker" doesn't seem enough yet it is all things. She was a home maker... with Nina's love you were always home, anywhere, anytime...Dan offered that we should use "Master Homemaker." We like that.

We children and grandchildren collected our memories of Janet. Here are some of the many that we find most significant:

Singing, always singing. When she was doing the most mundane and exhausting and tedious of chores...the dishes, the laundry, the dusting, making the beds...she always was singing and acted like she was so fortunate to get to do these things. She had this sense of gratitude, and thankfulness, and it showed up in song...especially romantic show tunes...

She always asked how you were doing and it was the most sincere reach into your soul kind of question because of how much she cared. And you told her. Things that were difficult to share with others poured from your heart. And she would make you smile and feel loved and the world would turn out as it should.

She had a ferocious love for all of her Saginaw family. No conversation with Mom was ever complete without a thorough rundown on the latest news from the family. She cherished every moment with each one of you.

Her fridge was a precious shrine of family photos...school pictures...achievements...funny shots...the latest from the Point.... Always a different set each time you visit. Seeing your photo there let you know that she was always aware of you and was watching over you with love.

She loved her home and everyone else loved her home too. This is where everyone wanted to be. You never, ever said goodbye without settling on exactly when you would next be together. In the same way you never finished a meal without deciding what your next meal would be and when, precisely, it would take place.

She taught the women in her family very important lessons, such as, a girl can never own too much china...there is no such thing as too much Christmas...if you spend the day shopping, and you should, and often, then ice cream is a healthy lunch. Also every single meal should have a dessert. And you don't have to tell your husband about everything you do, or everything you buy. But we should let them think they are in charge, because it's so cute that they imagine they are. And because they, Jack in particular, are all so very handsome.

She was one of the most organized persons in the world. Before her family visits, she would bake countless cookies and casseroles so that she would be available to the children and grandchildren to talk or play. Her freezer was filled with foods that Jack was not allowed to touch. She would bring out the cookies from the freezer at just the right time and she made every person's favorite...every time. Years later, when the grandkids were emboldened to admit it, we learned that they had, for years, been stealing frozen cookies from the freezer in the garage. Late in the evening, they would send the youngest, Scott, proudly dispatched on the cookie stealing mission, while the adults played Schmear or Hearts in the living room. And when we told Nina, she had wondered for years where all those cookies were going between meals.

She kept lists....people, birthdays, recipes, gifts...We just found a set of note cards yesterday with lists of every gift she had given to every family member from 1998 to 2005.

Every card we received read "all our love" from "Nina and Papa" or "Mom and Dad" or "Uncle Jack and Aunt Janet". And it really did contain all their love.

She never failed to send thank you notes. Brimming with appreciation that was real. She was so moved when she received one... the most recent one was from Betsy from their last trip together. At least some of her family has been paying attention.

She never turned down a card game. Getting called a "Bozo" by Nina during cards was such a badge of honor. Schmear was essentially a family religion. Like her mother, she loved competitive Solitaire, except she never won and she howled as loud as any of the children and grandchildren. She ran around the yard playing games like she was a little girl...all her life.

She bubbled with joy and the feeling of "I can't wait for what is next." She wore happy sun hats and bright scarves and little pins. She and Jack served root beer floats for Sunday supper, and she was happiest when Jack was driving one of the speed boats much too fast.

She loved hamburgers, but always called them hamburgs. She got up first to have her coffee by the window, and the grandchildren (and especially Trey) learned to get up early too and get their own personal time with Nina.

She was such a wonderful Mother...so loving, so kind, so firm in knowing what was right for her children.

Home one day in Dan and Jack's early teenage years, the boys came bursting into the house headed for the basement, not explaining, just running. Pretending not to know where there were, she greeted the nice policeman at her front door and affirmed that no, she did not know anything about a cannon ball that had just been fired into an unpopular neighbor's back yard. Not one thing. She always told that story with a twinkle in her eye.

And then all the years at horse shows. If there was ever anyone who didn't fit in the dirt of a barn it was Janet, and yet there she was, in a sun hat with a white purse, with a cooler of drinks and snacks for every motherless barn urchin. Always smiling. Always happy to be there. Laughing about not having Jack's dinner ready on time - "dinner is always at 6:07".

Always waving. The grandkids remember that no matter the countless boat rides on the river, she would always come out of the house, some distance into the yard, simply to wave and let them see that she was watching. And she was always watching.

She and Jack took each grandchild on a special trip anywhere in the US they wanted for their 10th birthday. 6 special trips, the children planned the itinerary but Nina chose the restaurants..and the children dressed up and used their very best manners. 100% of Nina/Papa love to keep with them forever.

And she pretended to be mad when the whole family would not eat until she lifted her fork at the dinner table, but beamed with pride that we had waited. And she was honestly angry whenever we teased her that Jack Jr. was her favorite child. The idea that any mother might have a favorite child made her absolutely crazy. So we teased her about that unmercifully.

She bought bunches of gifts and filled giant stockings at Christmas. There were table favors every holiday. For the out-of-town grandchildren, a big box of perfectly wrapped presents on your birthday, with an extra gift for each sibling just to remind them that Nina and Papa loved them too.

And the flowers. Everywhere.

For each one of us, "What would Nina do" and "What would Nina think" is probably the single most powerful force in our lives, and that shared experience is precious.

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Janet and Jack enjoyed 61 years of marriage and set an example for all of us to strive towards.

Sometime around 1950, back from the war and working in Detroit, Jack Teetor was visiting a longtime friend, Buzz Levenson, at Lake Wawasee. Buzz told him that he knew a girl from Depaw living in Saginaw that Jack needed to call and ask out on a date. Her name was Janet Spence. Jack was kind of a shy fellow and you know how blind dates are so awkward and such so Jack did not call. A couple months passed and Buzz asked Jack if he had called Janet yet. He said he would but again he didn't. Buzz asked a third time and this time insisted that Jack promise that he would call her. This time Jack did. He asked Janet to join him for dinner and a movie and she accepted. If you knew Janet, you knew that she didn't like wearing shoes. This date night she had on a very uncomfortable pair of new shoes, so when the lights dimmed in the theater, she quietly slipped them off. Sometime during the movie they were kicked a few rows away and at the end of the movie she had to admit, embarrassed, that she had lost her shoes. That was about the moment Dad lost his heart. He got down on his hands and knees and found her shoes for her. She always said she fell in love with him for that rescue.

Jack was working for a company called Linkbelt with a territory that covered much of southeastern Michigan. His boss noticed soon after that Jack's business in Saginaw was thriving and Jack was especially called to meetings in the area on Fridays and Mondays. Three months later, Jack and Janet were engaged. Janet later remarked that she had already been a bridesmaid 7 times and she was done with that!

There was only one thing and that was introduce Janet to Jack's parents, so Jack set up a weekend to bring Janet home. But Janet's mother, Esta, would not allow her daughter to travel until she had a written invitation from Jack's mother. Jack's mother's name was Charlotte and when the invitation arrived in Saginaw, Esta and Janet stared and stared at the signature. "Tots Teetor". "Tots"?

Finally the big weekend came, and Janet was scared to death. The four of them sat in the formal dining room, suits and dresses, fine china and crystal, slightly stuffy conversation. It came time for dessert and Mrs. Teetor brought out a brand new product that had just been invented to put on the dessert...CoolWhip in an aerosol can, quite the innovation. Mrs. Teetor shook the can as per the instructions and handed it to Janet who was the guest of honor. Janet, who had never seen this product, thought she pointed it at her dessert, pushed the valve, and promptly sprayed a stream of whipped cream across Mr. Teetor's suited chest. After a moment of pure horror, Mr. Teetor, and then Tots and then Jack and Janet burst into laughter, and from that moment on they adored her and she them.

More than 60 years have passed since that special time and Jack and Janet's love for one another is the greatest inspiration to us all. Finding joy in one another, taking care of one another, seeing and bringing out the best in one another. They prove the existence of true love. No two people have been more intertwined yet beautifully maintained their separate and special qualities.

The special smiles and tone of voice they always used with one another. The constant holding hands. Always flirting with one another. Janet lighting up whenever Jack was around. Jack, who was quite imposing to a certain new son-in-law, suddenly became much less imposing when Mom called him "honey buggie boo".

Always playing and laughing, the lamp game was something we all adored. One of them thought the lamp looked better in the middle of a certain end table. The other thought it looked better about three inches to one side. Every time either of them entered the room alone, they would move it to their preferred position. When the other eventually noticed the move, they would feign much aggravation with great and boisterous claims of "We're incompatible" producing rounds of giggles from everyone watching. They played this game with the same lamp and end table for over 30 years in their river house.

They were, and will always be, in love.

This is the love that surrounds us and comforts us and makes us laugh and binds all of us here today.

When asked about religion by one of her children long ago, Janet simply said "God is love". "God is love and that is all you need to know and all there is to it." Love was her faith, with no other details, and this is the faith we take forward from her. This is the faith that she gives each and every one of us to keep with us every single day.

She will live in our hearts, in our lives, and in everything happy and good forever.

TEETOR, Janet S., age 85, of Algonac, MI, passed away August 3, 2012. She was born May 15, 1927 in Saginaw, MI to Arthur M. Spence and Esta (Brown) Spence of Saginaw. A graduate of Arthur Hill H.S., Class of 1945; she entered DePauw Univ. in the fall; at DePauw she joined Alpha Gamma Delta Sorority. Returning to Saginaw she joined an insurance office and in 1951 she married Jackson H. Teetor of Hagerstown, Indiana; they lived in the Detroit area until their move to Algonac, MI in 1982; Janet was preceded in death by her two brothers, Donald J. Spence and Arthur M. Spence Jr.; she is survived by her husband Jack Teetor and children; Daniel (Karol) of Rochester Hills, MI, Jackson H. Teetor Jr. of Los Angeles, CA and Wendy (Trey) Denton of Statesboro, GA; and grandchildren; Matthew Teetor, Elizabeth (Betsy) Teetor, Daniel Denton (married to Rebecca Cutts Denton), Esta Denton, Kimberly Denton and Daniel Teetor; Visitation Monday 4-8 p.m. at Pixley Funeral Home, 322 W. University Dr., Rochester with the funeral service Tuesday 11:00 a.m. at the funeral home. Memorial contributions may be made to the organization of your choice. Please leave condolences at www.pixleyfh.com