Grandma's Obituary

I wanted to share my grandma's obituary here on my blog, both as a way to archive it for myself, and as a way to share it with anyone who may not have been able to make it to her funeral. If you missed my previous post about Grandma I will link that for you HERE. I wrote that the day after she died, and it was significantly harder to get through than this one. I actually haven't gone back to read it since then.

Also, while he was home for the funeral, my brother Jared went over to grandma's to take some pictures before everything inevitably changes over there.

Four Generations
Jared, our dad, Jared's son Jackson, & Grandma.

I'm including a couple of his pictures in this post, but if you're interested in seeing them all, I'll link you to his album on Facebook HERE. Not sure what his privacy settings are set to, but hopefully at least family and friends will be able to see them. Those pictures got to me almost as badly as writing my original blog post.

Grandma's obituary was written by my cousin Sarah, who took care of my grandma just about every day in her final years, and got her to share many of her stories from her years back in Canada. Sarah probably got to know my grandma the best of all her grandchildren, and was the perfect choice to write the obituary.

Sarah also shared a bunch of pictures with me, to use in this post, so the obituary will be a more illustrated version than the one in the funeral program.

Also, just to be a completist, before I get to the obituary itself, I wanted to include the inside of the program as well.

Marion North

1926-2018

Marion (Carleton) North was born November 14, 1926, to Clayton Carleton and Lillian (Dawkins) Carleton. She was raised on a farm in the tiny town of Orkney, Saskatchewan, during the Great Depression, living without electricity and hauling water, tending and butchering chickens for the family, shooting prairie dogs for the money by the tail, and attending a little schoolhouse by foot, or horse and cart, with her siblings.

It was at this school that she met her friend, Rose Marie, with whom she would have a friendship spanning over eighty years. Marion loved to ride her horse "Babe" across the prairie to break up the loneliness of living in Orkney, and would ride for miles in order to visit Rose.

Her paternal grandparents homesteaded near their family farm, and Marion would walk down to visit her Grandpa Charles, whom she called her "boyfriend".

They would eat apples and read each others letter's. Marion had pen pals early on, including a couple of young ladies from England. Her dedication to letter writing would shape her life, and others, for decades to come.

When she was 16, her future husband was hired on, as a farm worker during WW2. She kept in touch over thousands of miles between their home towns, writing letters by the light of a coal oil lamp, seeing him only during harvest season, for years.

 

Then on July 3, 1946, Marion Carleton, and Roy North, were married in Malta, Montana. She traveled, by train, with him to live in Ontario, where she was treated to many luxuries; like running water, and bread delivered to their door. In 1950, they moved to Transcona, Manitoba, and started a mushroom farm.

At this operation she was in charge of payroll and bookkeeping. In 1951 their first child, William, was born, and would be followed by five more children: John, Daniel, David, Andrew, and at last, her beloved daughter, Ruth. In 1971, the family moved to Spencer, Iowa, and then to Harlan, Iowa, in 1976.  

It was as a young married couple that Roy and Marion would profess Christ as their Savior. She would go on to teach Sunday School, do charitable work with other Christian ladies, and happily show much hospitality to preachers, missionaries, friends, and family. She loved to cook and bake for others, embroider, collect china, and cactus.

She was very faithful writing letters and sending cards. She kept written records of birthdays, anniversaries, addresses, and when she sent responses to letters. Through shaky handwriting, and memory struggles, she still made efforts in later years to write and call others, to keep in touch, and be an encouragement.

On October 7, 2018, her gentle spirit was taken from her home into the presence of her Savior, having attained the age of 91 years, 10 months, and 23 days.

She was preceded in death by her husband, Roy, brothers; Stanley (Lois) Carleton, Kenneth (Jean) Carleton; and her sister Mae (Thomas) Woods. She is survived by her children; William (Linda) North of Wheaton, Illinois; John (Cindy) North of Harlan; Daniel North of Harlan; David North of Harlan; Andrew (Sherri) North of Harlan; Ruth (Nathan) Klindt of Granby, Colorado; 11 grandchildren; 4 great-grandchildren; brother, George (Sophie) Carleton, of British Columbia, Canada; other family members, and friends.

Thanks to everyone who came to grandma's funeral, or sent their support. It meant a lot to everyone, and thanks again to Jared and Sarah for the pictures. They mean so much now, and will mean so much to us all in the future.

Graduation 2017

Well, it's finally over. Mostly. I still have to do an internship before it's official, but I am finished with my classes. Last Friday and Saturday were the graduation ceremonies. I didn't get many pictures myself, I was a but busy, but I gave my dad my camera, and my friend Rachel was there and took quite a few great pictures as well.

Friday night was the convocation ceremony for the graduates in the schools of LAS, Liberal Arts & Sciences.

We all got a medal from the school to wear during the ceremony.

Advertising was the first school into Hilton Coliseum, so I was one of the first ones in.

And since we were first onto the floor, we were also the first up.

The woman on the end in black, one of the people reading our names, was actually one of my favorite teachers from 4 years ago when I first started at Iowa State! Her name is Jane Cox, and she taught my History of Theater class, before I switched majors, when I was still going for the design degree. I actually even wrote a whole blog post about her, which you can find HERE. I'm sure she didn't recognize me, I was in a class of probably hundreds, but I recognized her immediately, and it was nice to see her again.

Afterwards we tried to get some pictures.

But the lighting was not very good, so this is the best we have. :)

That was convocation. The big one was the next day. To begin, every school went to a different location to line up. We were supposed to be there by 12, and the ceremony didn't start until 1:30, so there was a lot of sitting around.

My location was the Cyclone training arena.

I rarely take selfies but I did that day.

I took a picture as we walked out on the field of Jack Trice stadium. You can see just a fraction of the people graduating here. The ceremony was huge. I think there was almost 5000 people graduating here. Little did I know, I got my cousins Shaina and Sasha in this picture, as well as Rachel.

She texted me until I saw them. :p

She also got a picture of my family all the way on the other side of the stadium.

And Dad got a picture of them. :p

He also took a picture of Jackson. :)

Here's a game for you.

It's similar to Where's Waldo, but you're trying to find me. :p

Does this help?

I am there, but good luck finding me.

This was the picture published on the school newspaper's website the next day.

That's a lot of people.

Dennis Muilenburg, CEO of Boeing, and Iowa State Alumni, gave the commencement speech.

LAS was the second school to go, so I was up rather quickly, in comparison to the whole ceremony.

We all went through a photo tent to get our picture taken by a professional photographer before we went across the stage, but they didn't tell us what the tent was beforehand. My dark sense of humor imagined something nefarious going on in there. In particular I was thinking of a scene from an episode of Doctor Who were people were lined up to enter a building in order to be "upgraded" into a Cyberman. Yes, it would not have been very funny if it had been true, but I have a weird sense of humor. :p

No one got a very good picture of me actually getting the diploma (cover) but Rachel did get a great picture of me on the giant screen over the field.

The rest of the ceremony lasted until after 5, and by the end pretty much everyone had left. I didn't want to be one of THOSE people, I didn't want to seem rude and leave just because it was more convenient, so I stayed.

I suppose I should have just left; in the end, staying got me nothing but a sunburn. :p

But a girl gave me a streamer wand to shoot confetti, so I guess that was one good thing. :p

Afterwards I took another selfie while I waited for my family.

And then we went back to grandma's for a reception.

And Rachel insisted I pose for pictures with people. :)

Shaina

Rachel

 Sasha

Alex

Shaina and Alex

 Joel

Joel and Jared

Mom and Dad

That night, after everyone had left, I found this attached to my car.

Not sure who left it there, or why I didn't notice it earlier.

Mom thought it was Joel, but I never heard for sure. :p

And that was the day! I am glad that Rachel and Dad (and Sasha with my phone) were there to get pictures, because only like 5 of these were mine. There were of course official photographers there, and I should be getting a copy of those pictures, but I don't know when those will be coming. I'll probably do another post whenever I get those pictures.

As I said before, I won't have OFFICIALLY graduated until I've done an internship, and I am currently working toward that. I'm spending my first few weeks of summer building a portfolio/website. I'm making mostly a lot of new art and taking a lot of new photos for the site. I'll probably share some of the new stuff as I create it, and I'll of course share the website when it's finished. Stay tuned!