Marilyn Fay Gorowsky

Known for her laughter, kind heart, hopeful spirit and can-do attitude, Marilyn Fay Gorowsky, nee Tegge, passed from this world into eternal life with her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ on October 31, 2015. She is survived by her husband of 58 and 1/2 years, Merlin, daughter Carrie Micko (Robert) and sons Craig Gorowsky (Jennifer) and Glen Gorowsky (Laurie). Grandchildren Emily, Laura, John, Steven, Susan, Ricky, Daniel, Karen, Andie and Kai. Great grandchild Samuel.

Born and raised in Upper Peninsula Michigan, she lived above her father's jewelry store in Iron River during the winter, and spent summers on Hagerman Lake in a cabin built by her father from the wood on the 3 acres of land known as Pine Point. The third girl of four children, mom loved being in the middle of the fray of many friends and relatives who were always coming out for sing-a-longs featuring her brother Dick on the guitar and father Al on the banjo. Everyone would gather at the water's edge and sit around the bon fire and sing in harmony. No wonder my mom loved music!

Mom started out very shy. But she was always there to defend the defenseless. Once her father was remarking that the dog needed to go on a diet. Mom, who never said anything, piped up and noted, "But you're fat, and you still eat!" Everyone dissolved in laughter and the dog got dinner.

Mom grew up and the family moved to California for her mother's health. She worked in a florist shop for a while, and her skill with flowers continued her whole life. Ever nurturing in every aspect of her life, even in the end she managed to keep an African violet alive, even while it did the backstroke in the pot that she could no longer see or feel or tell whether it truly did need another watering.

Her sister, Shirlee, worked in Hollywood and in 1949 became the first Miss USA and a cover girl model. Somehow she roped mom into a beauty contest a couple of years later. Mom's shyness ambushed her and she couldn't play the piano for the talent show, but she won Miss Beauty of Burbank in 1951. That meant a lot to her all her life.

Eventually her father, Al, could stand it no longer and persuaded her mother, Esther, to return to the U. P. by allowing her to remodel the cabin. (See where I get it, kids?) Mom was always proud that the article her mother wrote about the remodel was published in good housekeeping magazine.

Always so shy, mom surprised everyone and suddenly decided she wanted to see the world. She moved to New York and got a job in the typing pool at NBC. She saw many celebrities, including her beloved Dean Martin. My father, Merlin, was in the army, stationed in New York. He had dated my mom's roommate, Mary, but once Mary wasn’t able to go out with him and sent mom instead. For a while, Dad took out whoever was available when he was in town. One day he saw Mom in the balcony, singing in the church choir and decided she was his angel. Mom had been looking for a Polish Lutheran, a difficult combination to find! And here he was!

They often went ice skating in central park. One day in the summer, he again took her to central park. She wore a beautiful light pink woolen dress. As he handed her a hot dog full of all her favorite condiments, she squeezed it too hard and the meat popped out and rolled down the front of her. Another time she was bringing donated clothes to a charity and hung them on the rail on the bus. As the driver cruised down a hill, so did the clothes, snagging a woman's wig with them!

Eventually mom moved to Saint Paul and eventually dad popped the question. As he formed the words a blinding light shone through the window of the car and a policeman told them they were not supposed to be in the park after dark and to move along. Dad asked, "Can I finish asking this woman to be my wife first?" The policemen said yes, and mom said yes and the rest is history.

They married June 1st, 1957, and I came along the next April. A few months later, my dad, who had made this trip to Michigan many times in record time, drove his new family to the cabin on the lake. The last few miles are like a roller coaster ride over high hills and deep valleys. Poor mom. Baby Carrie lost it all over her and they had to pull over and clean up before showing me off to the relatives.

A couple of years later, no siblings had yet followed, so mom was my playmate. I still remember when I was two years old. We were at the top of the neighborhood sliding hill and she was instructing me how to roll off the toboggan if it looked like we were going to hit a tree. She got on first and I snuggled up behind her. As soon as we started down the hill I was sure we were going to hit a tree (see kids, I've been a terrible passenger all my life!) So I rolled off the toboggan. Mom, on the other hand, flew like the wind, soaring down the hill and then up the 20-foot pile of logs they'd cleared for new housing and over the top she disappeared. Before I could start to cry I heard her famous laugh and she came around the corner and the world was good again.

Two brothers joined the family, but no sisters. So she remained my playmate, teaching me to sew and cook at a very early age. She used to order craft-of-the-month kits and we did everything from woodworking to dipping wires in colored melted plastic to make fake flowers. She built model cars, boats and airplanes with the boys, too. The smell of model glue and varnish bring back great memories with mom. She thought we could do anything and we grew up believing the same because she so believed in us. That's probably how I became Can-do Carrie. All that work on model airplanes probably helped my brother Craig who eventually became a mechanic on the SR-17 spy plane in the Air Force. And Glen got the music in his soul, writing songs and playing drums in bands.

Family was everything to mom. She invested her time, talents and money into her kids. She and dad made sure we all grew up to know and love the Lord by sending us to Christian school and modeling godly behavior. She loved kids, dogs, cats, squirrels, animals of every kind. We had a cat most of our growing up years, but the significant animal in our family was Rusty. He was a stray, golden Labrador hound and was too big for mom to handle. One wondered who was walking whom around the lake when she took him out.

Rusty hated the mailman. So mom learned to tie him to the tree when the mailman was due. Mom also loved flowers and often tended the front garden in the morning. One day the mailman came early and she scrambled to tie Rusty up to the tree. But he wound that rope around her ankles twice and took off toward the threat, knocking mom to the ground and flipping her wig toward the sidewalk. The dog didn't rip the postal worker to shreds, but he about busted a gut laughing every time he passed our house for the next few months.

Mom had a love-hate relationship with wigs. They provided easy style, but that's only when they stayed on. Once she got off the bus near Sears and a gust of wind blew her wig under the vehicle and she had to wait till the light changed and the bus pulled away before she could retrieve her dignity. The bus was rocking with laughter as it pulled away. So was she. She picked up the hairpiece, stuffed it in her shopping bag and laughed her way to Sears with her natural hair pinned closely to her head. Just inside the door was a bathroom vanity display, right next to the restaurant. In front of all the diners, she pulled out her wig, plopped it on her head and kept shopping.

Stuff was always happening to mom. She ordered a Christmas present for her toddler nephew Rich and a matching one for her own young son. She also ordered some clothing for herself. When identical boxes arrived, she picked one and sent it to her brother for Richie. She later got a call from Dick thanking her for the toy truck, but he thought perhaps the ladies underwear wouldn't fit his little boy and offered to send it back! She had shipped them the wrong package.

One Thanksgiving, mom was in the kitchen while listening to the TV which was playing in the living room. After Lunch with Casey, came Chef Tell, one of the first cooking shows. He was offering tips on how to make Thanksgiving dinner. We all know the struggle it is to get the cranberry sauce out of the can in one piece so you can slice it in rounds. The chef suggested turning the can upside down and also removing the bottom lid. Great idea! thought mom. So she went to the wall mounted can opener in the broom closet and tried it. Not having seen the visual on TV, she was befuddled when the cranberry sauce landed at her feet! That broom closet saw lots of adventures with mom, including the many times she opened the cat food cans and shut the door behind her wondering where Fluffy had gone, till she heard meowing from the closet.

In the late 70s, mom and dad bought a cabin on Mille Lacs Lake. Dad planted tomatoes and fished for walleyes. Mom grew flowers in boxes and around rocks and sat by the water. One day I was in the cabin looking out the door as mom was tending her petunias and my dad was sitting at the table eating a snack. He looked out at mom in the golden sunlight and nodded his head toward her and told me, “That’s the stuff heaven is made of.”

As I was raising my family my mom would call every week and ask me what day I would like a break and she would take the kids. She took them to restaurants and parks and let them pick cattails, which broke up all over the inside of her trunk. She just loved being with the kids. She and dad often took the older ones to the lake with them, and they renamed it Emilor Park after my first two daughters. One day she accompanied little Emily to the outhouse in the dark. All the sudden they heard what sounded like a leopard growling. Both mom and Emily screamed and ran for the cabin. Emily thought it was so funny that grandma beat her to the door!

Laughter was my mom's signature. We could always tell immediately if she was in the room because ten seconds wouldn't pass before her laughter would ring throughout the building. You could pick her out in a crowd by that laugh.

She was so optimistic. If there was a shred of anything good to be found, she found it. As I rolled her into her last assisted living apartment, I was getting set to apologize for the fact that it overlooked a drainage ditch and a retaining wall with electrical boxes and plumbing scattered throughout. She cried out, "Oh Carrie! What a beautiful view! "

"It's a drainage ditch, mom."

"No, look! " she insisted. I got down to her wheelchair level and looked up, and sure enough, there were her beloved piney trees at the top of the wall with blue sky arching overhead.

When we went to the ophthalmologist, the doctor asked mom, who by this time was almost completely blind, how she was. "I can still see the trees!" She cried in delight. The doctor, who was used to people complaining about what they couldn't see, and who knew how little mom could actually see, choked up and couldn't talk for a moment. People in assisted living and the nursing home who cared for her loved her and were amazed that even during painful wound cleaning sessions mom always thanked them for taking care of her. She was nothing, if not grateful.

Mom was like Ruth in the Bible, who took care of not only her mother but also her mother-in-law during their last days, always looking for ways to make their lives better and more interesting with shopping trips and outings. She came every day to her mother’s nursing home and advocated for her and attended her till her last moment on earth. She showed me how it was done, and when it came to be her turn, I wasn't going to let her slip through the cracks!

She loved music and loved hearing me sing. Craig became a guitarist and Glen plays the drums and writes songs, some of which have hit the airwaves! She was always encouraging her kids and grandkids to sing and play music.

The daughter of the soldier who guarded the statue of liberty in the First World War, she was very patriotic. She always thought she should have been born on the Fourth of July and celebrated the nation's birthday as though it were her own, which was actually a week later. Her dad led the parade down Genesee Street in Iron River, and she made sure we got to all the parades when my kids were little. A few years ago I was away at camp with Susan and the Fourth of July was on a Sunday. My daughter, Laura, and her friends Lizzy Hanke and Faith Thompson and Lauren McClearey made sure she got to the Forest Lake parade. Unfortunately the parade had been moved to Saturday! Undaunted, the girls took her to a gazebo in the park and sang patriotic songs with her for hours. It went down as one of her favorite moments in life.

She loved the fair, especially pronto pups, and we did everything possible to get her there. One year I ran into Jordan Schuck, a friend of my sons, as I pushed her in a wheelchair around the fair. He was there with 4H. He had a break and offered to give me a hand and he pushed her up and down every street in the fairgrounds. She never forgot it and mentioned it often. It didn't look like it was going to happen this year as she lost her ability to stand enough to get into a car. All summer she told everyone she could catch that she wanted to be on the group bus trip to the fair. She persuaded an aide, my dad and me to go get her a pronto pup from the little local county fair next door. But she really couldn't bear the thought of missing the Minnesota State Fair. So my friend, Debie Leason, came with to see how far we could get with two of us helping. We had to have aides lift her into my car. I knew then that we couldn't get her out again by ourselves, so we drove along the perimeter and found vendors who were selling things. We filled her lap with mini donuts, onion rings and a basket with a pronto pup slathered in mustard. As far as she was concerned, she had been to the fair.

She loved family gatherings and made it to my dad's 83rd birthday party, which also celebrated my daughter Emily, sister-in-law Shellee and son Steven's birthdays. She couldn't talk much or open her eyes anymore, but she loved being in the fray of it all. In her last couple of weeks she was able to be with much of her family and even have lunch with some of her life-long lady friends who came to visit.

That's what mattered to her. People.

In her last week she confided to my daughter Laura that she feared she had failed. “What did you fail, grandma?”

“My job.”

“What was your job?”

“I don't know.”

Laura reassured her that she had done her job and done it well. She raised all her children to know, love and serve God. They have gone on to do the same with their own children and her great grand children. That's the definition of success. She seemed reassured and rested. I reminded her of that when she was no longer verbal and was clearly slipping away. "You are a success mom. You loved your husband till the end, and your children and grandchildren in such a way that they now know what the love of God looks like."

Shortly thereafter she slipped into the arms of the Savior that she loved and served all her life. I'm sure she heard, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant."

I would agree.