Lucile Faye Rieman

Lucile Rieman, a dearly loved and respected woman, died on Friday, March 2, 2012. She was our Super Mom, our spiritual and practical advisor, best friend and confidante. Her three children, Shelley, Bob and Patti, received an upbringing of tender devotion and solid values. We will love her and miss her for the rest of our lives.
Lucy was born in 1921 in Ft. Calhoun, Nebraska to Edythe and Otto Kruse. She had an older brother, Don and a younger brother, Roger. They were part of a big extended family in a rural, farming community of 200 residents. Her cousins were her best friends and constant companions for many years. There were only eight seniors in her high school graduating class.
After high school and some college, Lu went to work for RKO in Omaha; in 1943, she accepted a one year position with them to work in the Panama Canal zone. She and two girlfriends decided to take a Latin America adventure trip before returning to the US. They visited the San Blas Islands, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guatemala and Mexico.
Back in Omaha, she met her future husband, Bud (L. Neville) Rieman, at a USO dance. They married in 1945. Lu and Bud lived in a few places until they settled in the Chicago area and raised their three children. Family was always her focus. We regularly visited Nebraska relatives and stayed in close contact with Bud's family; his parents while they were alive, and especially his sister, Peggy and her husband and daughters, who lived nearby in the Chicago area and again later in California.
While her children were growing up the home was quite the gathering spot for many of her children's friends. She had a demeanor which was open, inquisitive, and welcoming and led to the kids feeling very comfortable to visit. She had many many friends of her own, some going back for seventy years; others, new friendships made at Riverview Terrace.
Lu was a homemaker who also did quite a bit of civic and volunteer work. She LOVED books and reading. This avocation led her to participate in a Great Books group and she was in other book clubs for the rest of her life, including one that meets monthly at Riverview Terrace, her last home here in Roseburg, Oregon. In the 1980's, she worked at the Tattered Cover, a well-known book store in the Denver area. She also traveled a lot during this time period, visiting her daughters in Boston and Oregon and her son on Roatan Island, Honduras. She went with a travel club to Russia, China, Budapest, Vienna and Aruba.
Lu also undertook a sailing adventure during a trip to Roatan Island, Honduras in the 1981. She helped out as crew and cook while traveling from Roatan to Guanaja Island, Honduras, then on to Swan Island, Honduras, and finally signing off at Georgetown, Grand Cayman. Upon her return to her home in Colorado she had plenty of stories to share with her friends.
My mom was the first person I knew to practice yoga. We would come home from elementary school to find her standing on her head against the dining room wall. When she and Bud moved from Illinois to Connecticut, and then to Colorado, Mom sought out yoga teachers to continue with her practice. In later years, she became an avid golfer. The mental discipline of yoga likely helped her golf game. Bridge was another way she used her great mind. She was sought out as a partner and livened many a game with her thoughtful and clever plays.
Lucile died peacefully at home with her daughters, Shelley and Patti by her bedside. She is survived by her daughters, her son Bob, five grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren, five nieces and two nephews. If you wish to make a memorial contribution in her name, please do so to the Hospice Foundation of America or American Hospice Foundation. --Shelley Rieman & Patti Rieman
My Ma
What can I man say at a time like this in regards to responding to the news received after a gig Friday night that my Mother Lucile Faye Kruse Rieman had passed at the age of ninety years. I guess about sixty hours have gone since she went to a new place, and I can't talk to her from here. I had the great fortune of sharing a few words with Ma on Thurs over the phone which I will forever cherish, had a few other short occasions of the same in the last few weeks since my return from a seven day visit with her way out in Oregon where she had resided these last years. Close by my organic farming sister Patti she was. A very comforting factor for me after she had been living miles from either of us three offspring for many years. She had settled into her new surroundings of the Riverview Terrace Retirement Apartments. I had two previous occasions to visit her there in the previous three years, and it is a very nice place where she made friends easily, eventually engaging in weekly bridge games, and plenty of opportunity to read her books. Possibly her favorite pastime. She had a presence about her and seemed revered by her fellow Riverviewites with whom she fell in with. There would always be a table of them with her in the dining room, and I am sure very lively discussions would often ensue. These folks of the pre WWII era, the depression era, the beneficiaries of a long life afforded them, each with tales of the seven, eight, nine, indeed ten decades of living through all that life had in store for them. I met many folks there on my visits, and on my recent seven days with Lu received many comments from residents and staff about how they felt about her. It rekindled the knowledge I always had of what a special type person my mother was, Even since my earliest memories she stood out in my mind as a constant and confident part of my life, to my extreme good fortune. Me and my siblings were also fortunate enough to have a Father around and she and Bud made a good team raising us through the fifties and into the sixties. His daily endeavors commuting downtown and frequent trips vying the wares he represented from a large Chicago clothing company allowed her the freedom of being a fulltime mom, a job she couldn't have done any better as I look back on it all. Children don't arrive with a set of instructions, but being the product of modest rural midwestern roots, she seemed to have had an inate sense of what she needed to do. And do it she did with all the energy and instinctive meaures that seemed to emanate from her so naturally. With benefit of confidence and good health nurtured in us by loving parents me and my two sisters made our separate ways in the directions of our choosing. We each ended up for no particular reason about as far as u could get from Chicagoland and still be in the western hemisphere. Shelley in Boston, Patti in Oregon and me down here in Honduras. But she always seemed to find a way to give us her blessings and a strong word of advice. During the ensuing years life had much in store for all of us, the proverbial ups and downs all mankind experiences. But I know I have been bolstered in such a big way knowing she was always a part of my life, always interested in what my life was about, not hesitating to give her opinion, her instinctive take. With due respect to my Father who nonstop busted his backside for us when we were children, he was gone alot and Ma was always that constant. Through it all she played a major part in creating that beacon with which I was able to direct my life. Having grown and blessed children of my own now, she provided the template on how rearing them took place.
I can't thank you enough from the bottom of my heart my dear Ma. I will miss you forever, until we meet again. love, your son Robert