Obituary of Nelda Pearl (Skow) Rupp

Nelda Pearl (Skow) Rupp died from complications due to Alzheimers on April 21, 2021. She was 87 years old.

 

Born at home to Nels and Helen (Goodwin) Skow near Lewiston, Idaho on June 5, 1933, Nelda was the second of four children. As a child of the Great Depression, Nelda’s family moved frequently, looking for work, before finally settling near Cheney, WA on a rented farm. It was there she attended high school, meeting Walter “Harvey” Rupp, a senior to her freshman. Their relationship began after his graduation and enlistment; the two became reacquainted when he returned home on leave before deploying to Korea. Days after graduating, Nelda took a bus to meet Harvey in California.  Just two days after her 18th birthday, Harvey and Nelda married in the living room of a Lutheran pastor in Orange, CA, near where he was stationed.

 

Harvey and Nelda moved back to Cheney after his service in Korea ended, and their two children, David and Phyllis, arrived shortly after. With her sharp and curious mind, Nelda enrolled at Eastern Washington University in 1957. Being a returning female student with small children at home was nearly unheard of at the time, but with childcare support provided by Harvey’s mother Henrietta, she received her degree in teaching in 1960. Immediately after graduation she began teaching grade school on Fairchild Air Force Base. The Rupps moved a few times that decade, looking for better opportunities, including to Florence and Astoria before finally settling in Milwaukie, OR. Nelda found her teaching home at Bilquist Elementary School, first in the lower grades before finding her place teaching sixth grade. When a home two blocks from the school was built, they purchased it and lived there for the next 45 years.

 

Two generations of students came through her classroom, learning three-digit multiplication and going to Outdoor School as one of the “Rupp’s Raccoons”. She was very active in the teacher’s union, and was a leader and role model in her profession. Even after retiring from classroom teaching, Nelda continued to support aspiring teachers as a student teaching supervisor at Concordia University.

 

Nelda lived by two mottos, both hanging from the wall of her sewing room, “Opportunity often comes disguised as hard work,” and “Blessed to be a blessing.” Her faith was a large part of her life, and she lived it every day. She attended Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church at least twice a week, a place where she was engaged in many committees, especially mission and education. 

 

For a girl from Eastern Washington who didn’t see the ocean until she was 18 years old, she became an accomplished traveler. Her belief in education and God led her to unique travel opportunities. She went twice to the Arctic Circle to teach Vacation Bible School, coming home with stories of polar bears and water-landing planes. When China opened to Western visitors in the 1980’s, Nelda spent two summers there teaching English to English teachers. Shortly after retiring, Nelda and Harvey took a four-week Rick Steves tour of Europe, a trip they both talked about for years to come. She and Harvey also went to the East Coast several times to visit their oldest granddaughter as well as regular vacations to Lincoln City and other road trips to visit family and friends. They attended reunions for the USS Hollister, the ship Harvey had served on during his time in Korea. The consummate planner, Nelda served on various reunion committees for a decade before age restricted her and Harvey’s travel. 

 

It is impossible to calculate the impact Nelda had upon the world at large, and her family in particular. The facts of her life will never be enough to contain the love she spread across three generations. Nelda raised her own two children with a firm and loving hand, with lots of summer trips to visit cousins, camp on lakes, and help out on various family farms. She took in her only two grandchildren with the same steady support when they needed it, creating stability in their young lives with the twin pillars of church and school. She sewed holiday dresses, made Sunday dinner, and ensured homework was done as well as taught them card games and took beach trips to Lincoln City three times a year. Nelda provided for the girls’ music lessons, despite her self-professed “tin ear”, and art supplies, though she thought of herself as an uncreative person. She warmed tiny feet without complaint, and was always available for a cuddle. As the girls grew older, she was the first person they called for advice, or to report exciting news. She was a reliable spoiler of babies and dogs, and kept treats on hand for both.

 

Nelda had been an early adopter of technology, having an Apple IIe the first year they became available. Once email took off, she wrote a daily email to the family of what she and Harvey had done that day, essentially becoming the family blogger. Weather reports, a check on the garden, what was happening in various committees, and visits to friends and doctors were all regularly featured. These emails became the first place her dementia became evident to the family, with small spelling and grammar errors. Over time, the emails grew shorter, the errors more pronounced. They ended when she and Harvey moved out of their home of 45 years and into the care of Willamette View.

 

The three years they spent at Willamette View were comfortable ones, with many visitors and new friends. She remained active, attending exercise classes twice daily as well as continuing to play Bunco weekly. The isolation of COVID quickly brought on degeneration, and she entered memory care in the fall of 2020. Her care team commented regularly on how funny and charming Nelda was, even in dementia. After days of family vigil, she died without discomfort early on the morning of April 21.

 

Nelda is predeceased by her husband of nearly 70 years, Harvey, who died fifteen weeks prior, as well as her parents, her brother Peter Skow, and a sister, Lucile (Skow) Dorgan. She is survived by her brother John Skow, her two children, David Rupp (Marylou Rupp) and Phyllis Shore (Don Shore), her two grandchildren, Rev. Tuesday Rupp (Rev. Tony Lorenzen) and Corinne Rupp (Don Allgeier), and three great-grandchildren, Satie Williams, Odile Williams, and Penelope Allgeier. She will be forever missed, but her love of education, her deep faith, her spirit of adventure, and her ability to can a peach will live on through her family. She will be interred at Willamette National Cemetery, next to Harvey, on June 7, on what would have been their 70th wedding anniversary.

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