Renate Helene (Arnold) Thorpe

Thorpe, Renate Helene (Arnold), passed away April 25, 2019, at home in Wichita. Renate was born June 27, 1928 in Leipzig, Germany, to Johann Georg and Ida Helene (Pfau) Arnold. Her father was from Franconia-Bavaria and her mother from Saxe-Altenburg, and met during his military training before WWI. After Renate's mother died in 1942, her father remarried, sold his butcher store, and moved back to Bavaria with Renate's new stepmother, Adelheid (Kunze). Renate stayed with an aunt in Leipzig to continue school, despite the frequent Allied bombing raids on the city. Near the end of the war she was sent to stay with her stepmother's parents in supposedly-safe Dresden, just before the city center was destroyed by intense fire bombing in February 1945, surviving the event from a suburb across the Elbe River. Renate witnessed the capture of Leipzig by the US Army in spring of 1945, and its transfer to Soviet occupation later that year. Her beloved older brother Rolf was reported Missing in Action on the Eastern Front, and never returned from the war. When American tanks were rolling towards the center of Leipzig, Renate ignored warnings from others sheltering in the neighborhood bomb shelter, went outside, and gave the Americans instructions in her school English on which path to take. After the war, Renate fled the Soviet occupation zone to join her father and stepmother in the American-controlled zone in Bavaria. She was picked up buy a British patrol that allowed her to continue her journey, but warned she had to find employment or she would be sent back. Because she had taken English in school and could type, Renate had gotten a job as an inventory clerk on the US Army vehicle depot at Illesheim. There she met her future husband, Charles E. "Charlie" Thorpe, who was stationed there. The two met on Christmas Eve of 1948, in front of the town hall in nearby Bad Windsheim. Both were waiting for a ride back to base, and it had just begun to snow. Renate and Charles were married before a German magistrate April 21, 1949, and had a church ceremony on Sunday the 24th, the first couple to be married on post. The ceremony was performed by an itinerant Army clergyman, who had neither been told in advance that he would be performing a marriage ceremony, nor had he ever performed one before. Charles had already gotten his orders to return stateside, but Renate's papers were not finalized, so she joined him later that year. 55 years later, the couple returned to the base with their two children in 2004, they were received by the commanding officer, and given a guided tour of the now much larger and renamed Storck Barracks / Illesheim Kaserne. Renate's first moments in Wichita were not the best. The airlines had communicated to Charles that she would not be on her originally scheduled flight, but not that she had managed to board a later one. When Renate arrived in Wichita, Charles and his family were waiting in the airport parking lot, expecting her to come the next morning. It appeared that no one was there to meet her, but eventually Charles went in and found her waiting alone in the empty airport. Renate worked in payroll at the Cudahy Packing Plant in the 1950s before starting a family. Angela came along in 1957 and Charles (Chuck) in 1960. She went back to work in the 1970s, first in accounting for Holiday Inns of Wichita, and eventually becoming personnel manager for all three area hotels before retiring in 1986. She was an active member in Phi Beta Psi sorority, raising funds for cancer research, the German-American Association of Wichita keeping membership records and editing a monthly newsletter, serving as assistant troop leader for the Girl Scouts, and as PTA officer. Renate enjoyed playing bridge and pinochle, dancing and singing, traveling in the US and abroad, and attending performances of Wichita Music Theater. She and Charlie were very involved in the lives of their grandchildren, who to this day refer to them by the German terms for 'grandma' and 'grandpa:' Omi and Opi. Renate is survived by her husband Charles, daughter Angela R. McQuery of Wichita, son Charles A. Thorpe of Manhattan, KS; grandsons Christopher, Brian, and Daniel McQuery; and great-grandchildren Dylan, Seth, Lillian, and Lilyth McQuery. She was preceded in death by her parents, stepmother Adelheid (Kunze) Arnold, and brother Rolf Oskar Arnold. Visitation will be 5-7 pm Tuesday April 30, 2019. Funeral service is 10:00 am Wednesday, May 1, 2019, both at Resthaven Mortuary. Memorial donations to Phi Beta Psi sorority may be made online at www.phibetapsi.org.