Diane Marie Berger

A celebration of life reception is planned from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 7, at Porter-Loring West Funeral Home in San Antonio for her San Antonio friends.

A Memorial Mass will be celebrated for Diane at 11 a.m. Saturday, March 8, at Holy Angels Church in San Angelo. A luncheon will follow at the church hall. Burial will be a private ceremony with the immediate family.

Diane was born June 10, 1962, in San Angelo, Texas, to Eugene and Ethel (Hoelscher) Berger, who both survive her. She was a member of Prince of Peace Catholic Church in San Antonio.

She is also survived by siblings Coleen (Kent) Schneider of Johnson City, TN; Pam (Bruce) Backlund) of San Angelo; Joan (Steve) Schmidt of Valrico, FL, and James (Katrina) Berger of Draper, UT, as well as six nieces (Heidi, Trudy, Margaret, Sarah, Tatiana and Alexa), nine nephews (Ben, Daniel, Joseph, Alan, Thomas, Eric, Karl, Mark and John), nine great-nieces and 10 great-nephews. Other survivors include an uncle and several aunts and cousins.

Diane graduated from Angelo State University in San Angelo before embarking on a career in banking. She started out in bookkeeping, moved on to customer service and loan service and ended her career in technology (as a system consultant), retiring in 2023.

Through her job, she made her home in San Angelo, then Lubbock (in 1994) and finally San Antonio (in 1996). She saw several bank mergers and name changes – from Central National Bank to First National Bank of West Texas to Norwest Banks to Wells Fargo.

Diane always enjoyed learning and loved the challenges that her job offered. She once said, “Change is inevitable. If you don’t like something, all you need to do is wait, and it will change. Sort of like the weather.”

She weathered all the bank’s re-organizations with aplomb, even earning in 2014 a “Top Performers” award, annually given to only 3% of the bank’s technology employees in the nation.

Diane loved San Antonio and bloomed there, much like the yards she attended to so lovingly. She planted drought-tolerant perennials in her front yard and made half of the backyard a garden, striving always to grow xeriscape plants.

Diane made friends easily. She and her neighbors helped each other with home projects and enjoyed neighborhood feasts together. And Diane hosted “craft days” for the young kids in her neighborhood. (She also brought “craft days” to her many nieces and nephews during their annual summer get together in San Angelo.)

Diane enjoyed San Antonio’s outdoor jazz concerts in the summer, collecting kaleidoscopes, reading from her Nook, drawing, painting (especially scenery from her memorable trip to the Grand Canyon), knitting, crocheting and cross stitching. But the hobby she excelled at was quilting.

She made her first quilt top at the age of 16 with the encouragement of her mom. “The pattern was ‘Grandmother’s Garden Quilt’ and had a large number of hexagons,” she wrote in the 2020 Joseph and Sophie Schwartz family history book. “Little did I know that was one of the harder quilts to piece!”

One of the most complicated quilts she pieced during adulthood is her “State Star” quilt with 42 blocks. Each 12-inch block is of a state star, and each has between 40 and 128 pieces.

Over her lifetime, Diane made hundreds of quilts of all sizes and complexities for friends and relatives. All her siblings, nieces and nephews received full-size quilts from her, with the great-nieces and great-nephews each getting a baby quilt.

Diane never personally profited from the quilts she made. Some of her quilts were donated to Holy Angels Church in San Angelo for their annual festival and to West Texas Rehab Center for their annual telethon.

She also made lap-sized quilts for the Child Protective Service adoption ceremony in San Antonio. She once said it made her happy to “see the bright faces of these kids as they choose just the right quilt to take home with them as they go to their ‘Forever Homes.’”

In addition, she made several “Quilts of Valor” for military recipients.

But her real contribution to the military was volunteering with Alamo Honor Flights, which transports World War II veterans to Washington DC to see military memorials and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. In 2013, she personally accompanied one of those veterans (as his guardian) and continued the friendship with him upon return, with monthly lunches.

Her volunteer efforts did not stop there. Long before she had cancer, she grew her hair out (numerous times) to have it cut to make wigs for others who had lost their hair. (But in all modesty, she never deemed that worthy to share with many people.)

Diane also volunteered for many years in the VITA (Volunteer Income Tax Assistance) program, earning higher certification at one point, so she could help with more complex returns.

Diane had a passion for her family and for books. Her great love for both is evident in another of her labors of love – the Franz and Anna Berger family tree book for 1873-1992.

She started the project in 1986 because “I was simply a curious individual looking up her family roots,” as noted in the book’s introduction. The book was the first one compiled for the six generations (in existence at that time) of her Berger great-great-grandparents.

In 2020, she started reading (or listening to) books on the PBS “The Great American Read” list of America’s best-loved novels. By the end of 2021, she had consumed more than 200 of those books. And in 2022, she reported reading between five and 10 books a month and listening to an additional 10 to 15 audio books.

And to commemorate her reading accomplishments?

She pieced and quilted a library quilt, highlighting many of the books that had enlightened her life – a life that was short in length but long in love, hope and positivity, even in the face of cancer.