Sarah Elizabeth Moorehouse

Called Elizabeth by her family and Liz by her friends, she was born on April 22, 1921, to Thomas and Susanna Branks in Willock, Pennsylvania. Her father worked in the coal mines there, and the family lived in a company-owned house without electricity or plumbing. Thomas Branks had served in World War I, and was exposed to mustard gas before returning home to the mines. In 1927, suffering from respiratory problems, he consulted a doctor who told him had had to get out of the mines if he wanted to live more than another two years. The family moved to Detroit where Thomas found factory work and 6-year-old Elizabeth was enrolled at Ives Elementary School.

Liz thrived in Detroit. She loved baseball and the Tigers, and also loved playing sandlot ball with the neighborhood boys. Whenever the ball landed on the roof of the bar next to the alley where they played, she was the one who would shinny up the drainpipe to retrieve it. Eventually a local man noticed the ballplayers and recruited them for a youth league—but he refused to take Liz because she was a girl, even when the boys protested that she was a good player and ought to be on the team.

Her family continued to grow. In Willock, Liz’s younger siblings Jack and Elva had been born. After the move to Detroit, Bill, Darley, and Tom were added at two-year intervals. They moved to a two-story house on Philip near Charlevoix, where an array of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins joined them during the Depression. In spite of the financial hardships of the era, Liz remembered those years fondly, and enjoyed having so many relatives staying in the house together.

She continued to live there after graduating from Southeastern High School in 1937, finding jobs in the city to help the family stay solvent. By 1940, she’d begun dating Fred Moorehouse, the brother of Liz’s best friend Marge, whom she’d met on her first day at Ives Elementary in 1927. Fred joined the Navy, where he became Chief Petty Officer on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific theater of World War II. Liz married him in Detroit in 1944 while Fred was on leave, and they honeymooned in Chicago for a weekend before Fred took a train west to return to the war and Liz took a train east to return to her parents’ house.

After the war, they settled first in Detroit, then in Roseville, and finally in Warren, and raised four children. They joined St. Gabriel’s Episcopal Church in East Detroit and embraced it fully. Liz was a member of the Altar Guild, the St. Margaret’s Guild, the Martha Mary Guild, the Garden Club, and, for 45 years, the Senior Choir. She taught Sunday School and Bible School, served on the Vestry, contributed to and periodically chaired the Strawberry Festival and the Christmas Bazaar, and worked for 14 years as the church’s Secretary-Treasurer. Liz’s faith was deeply rooted in the idea that the best way to live as a Christian is to help others. She founded the Outreach Committee at St. Gabriel’s, and assisted with dinner service for the needy each week until she was 98 years old.

She also loved the Scarab Club, the venerable Detroit artists’ institution that Fred became active in during the 1970s. Liz joined him at many of the Club’s exhibitions, auctions, concerts, lunches, and parties, and became deeply enmeshed in its unique and wonderful social fabric. After Fred’s death in 1988, she was asked to serve on the governing board, which she happily did for many years. On her retirement from the board, the other members invited her to sign one of the beams in the lounge, the Club’s highest honor and a measure of the love and respect she commanded there.

Liz had many interests, and it seemed like she was gifted at everything she tried. An avid gardener, she tended a property so thick with the colors and scents of flowers that it felt more like a botanical garden than a small suburban yard. She also enjoyed cooking, and her pasties, with their extraordinary crusts, remain legendary among those who were lucky enough to taste them. And she was a remarkable craftswoman, able to design and create all manner of beautiful Christmas ornaments from simple materials.

Most importantly, though, Liz was a wonderful friend, wife, and mother. She and Fred had grown up in the same neighborhood and so had a circle of mutual friends that went back to their childhoods. Any time they all got together, gales of laughter would fill the house, keeping the children awake late into the night in the best possible way.

She and Fred enjoyed an exemplary 44-year marriage that was full of humor and happiness. Her first comment after his passing was, “We had so much fun!” Although his death was a profound blow to her, Liz was strong and active, and she continued to live a rich life in the decades that followed, traveling, attending concerts, and remaining fully engaged with the world around her.

As a mother, Liz was committed, consistent, attentive, and caring. She valued her children as individuals and allowed them to follow their own paths. Every day, she provided a model of how to live as a successful adult and community member by virtue of her natural competence and compassion. And of course she adored her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and they adored her right back.

By the time of her passing, Liz had many more friends and loved ones in Heaven than on Earth. After a long life of such uncommon grace, she has surely earned her place among them.

Liz was preceded in death by her husband, Fred; brother Jack; sister Elva and her husband Frank; brother Bill; sister Darley and her husband Don; and brother Tom.

She is survived by her children Kevin (Marsha Grey), Ann, Bruce (Sue), and Joe (Marsha Benz); grandchildren Sarah Wasmund (Ryan), Adam (Katie), Evan, Noah, and Jaime; great-grandchildren Emma, Charlotte, and Jack; sisters-in-law Joanne Branks and Judy Branks; and many nieces and nephews.

Visitation from 4:00 to 8:00 on Sunday, May 21, at A. H. Peters Funeral Home, 32000 Schoenherr, Warren, MI, 48088.

Viewing at 10:30 and service at 11:00 on Monday, May 22, at Grace Episcopal Church, 115 Main St., Mt. Clemens, MI 48043.

Donations in Liz’s name can be made to the Grace Church Community Supper fund at the address above.