Rosina Drake

Rosina Drake was born on August 12, 1931 to Franz and Barbara Schichtl (Proebstl) in Buching, Germany, in the Allgaeu region of the Alps. She was raised to be hard-working and self-sufficient, helping with farmhouse chores, haying in the pastures, and knitting her own socks and mittens. As a young girl, she excelled in school, and was assigned by her schoolteacher to tutor her classmates in math and reading in the teacher’s absence. On one such occasion she took her fellow students into the mountains on an impromptu hiking trip, much to the consternation of her teacher who came back to an empty classroom.

After completing her primary schooling in Buching, she attended a college for business in Nuremberg, Germany, where she worked for an American Army family, the Lang’s, who were stationed there. On completing her studies, the Lang’s invited her to visit them in Camp Stewart, Georgia, on their return to the US. At the age of 23, with an adventurous spirit and the desire to travel, she boarded a passenger ship on her own, bound for New York City on a 3 week journey on storm-rocked seas. Living with the Lang’s, she found work as a bookkeeper on the Army base, and soon after, at a Christmas party at the Officers’ Club on base, she met a handsome young officer, Charles F. Drake. They fell in love, and in June of 1955, they entered into a 56 year marriage, during which they had five children.

Over the 31 years of her husband’s Army career, they lived in several states and in Germany, where she reunited with her family in her hometown. There, she introduced her children to their German grandparents, her extended family, and the Bavarian culture, and she shared her joy with them of singing and yodeling on hikes in the surrounding mountains that she had wandered as a girl.

As an officer’s wife, she met the challenges of uprooting and resettling a growing family every few years with resilience and without complaint, transforming each new place into a beautiful and comfortable home. Her free-spirited nature was expressed with spontaneous adventures and detours: finding a good stream for catching trout with the fishing rod she kept in her trunk, camping with her children by VW van around Germany, Austria, and Italy, and most notably, during her husband’s deployment in the Vietnam war, driving a truck camper on her own, with five children ages 1-11 in the back, from Virginia to Montreal to visit Expo ‘67, and from there, camping across the northern US and southern Canada.

Curious and intelligent, she took classes in Russian and in computer programming in Kansas, and in Virginia, she worked as a real estate sales agent. In Oberammergau, Germany, where her husband served as Commandant of the NATO School from 1975-1978, she presided with him over official and social functions for the multi-national visiting student officers and NATO personnel. After her husband’s retirement, the family settled in Springfield, VA, where they had lived prior to their last tour in Germany. Resuming her bookkeeping career, she began working at the American Automobile Association, where she automated the organization’s accounting system, and was promoted to Accounting Department Manager.

During her free time, she tended her lush flower gardens, and undertook several home improvement projects. Resourceful and determined, she performed all of the work on her own, including installing two ponds with a waterfall, excavating and building a hillside shed, building a stone patio and paved walkways, renovating the cellar to create a new bedroom, as well as performing all the home maintenance, including plumbing, carpentry, and even electrical wiring. Into her early 80’s, she continued climbing the ladder to the top of the roof to make repairs or clean out the gutters.

After retirement, she pursued her life-long passion of travel, with several journeys across the globe accompanied by her sister, Aloisia, including a Danube cruise, as well as on the Yang-Tse River of China, a steep hike on the Great Wall, and a steamboat cruise in the Amazonian jungles of Brazil. With her daughter, Ingrid, she explored the coasts of New Zealand along treacherous mountain roads. She joined her daughter, Barbara on cross-country ski trips in Vermont and New Hampshire.

With the arrival of her five grandchildren, she became a doting and loving “Oma”, delighting them with her fun-loving spirit. She took them on trips, played with them in her garden, gave them ice cream for lunch, and got down on her hands and knees to play games with them at their level. She was such an engaging playmate that one of her young grandsons had said, “Oma isn’t an adult – she’s a child-lady!” which she took as a great compliment.

Joining new friends of all ages and backgrounds, in her later years, she took up her former hobby of playing bridge, in which she was a skilled player. She amazed her family in Germany with her talent for writing poetry, filling pages with rhymes written in her native Bavarian dialect, as tributes for milestone birthdays and events. With a steel trap memory, she was a repository of knowledge that all of her family could draw on for historical information and old anecdotes. She loved telling lengthy stories to her family and friends, and was fond of regaling her children with “baby stories” about them on their birthdays.

She inspired all who knew her with her optimistic outlook and good humor, her determination, and her independent spirit. She lit up the room with her twinkling eyes and ever-present smile, touching everyone with her generous heart, her compassion, and helpfulness. She was never too busy to come to a loved one’s aid, to lend a sympathetic ear, to engage in conversation, or to play with her grandchildren. Her priority, above all in her life, was love.

She is survived by her daughter Barbara, of Gloucester, MA, son Fabyan, of Springfield, VA, son Christopher, and his wife, Helen, of Eliot, ME, daughter Mary Cortina and her husband Jim of Annandale, VA, daughter Ingrid Freeman and her husband, Philip, grandchildren Erika, Tomas, Charles, Michael and Andrew, her sister Aloisia Osterried, sister-in-law, Hedwig Schichtl, and many nieces and nephews in New England and in Germany. She was predeceased by her husband, Charles F. Drake (Col. – Ret).

Donations in her memory may be made to FisherHouse.org serving military families. http://engage.fisherhouse.org