Emogene Ora Andrews

A memorial service will be held at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, September 6, at the Elim Home chapel in Princeton with Pastor Dan Osborne officiating. Memorials are suggested to Imagination Library http://imaginationlibrary.com/usa/howworks.php Elim Skyview Caregivers Elim Special Project Emogene Ora Diefenbach was born December 13, 1920, in Lexington, Nebraska, to Melvin and Ida (Koehn) Diefenbach. She graduated from Lexington High School in 1939 and worked at the credit union in Lexington before moving with her sister Arlene to California to work in a McDonald-Douglas factory during World War II. There she met Donald Andrews, and they were married in Kingman, Arizona, on January 22, 1943. When he went to the Philippines, she returned to Lexington and worked at the Dodge garage. He joined her in Lexington after the war and worked as an auto mechanic. Their three children, Chuck, Margaret and Bob were all born there. Emogene managed the home front, supporting Don while he worked as a mechanic and then had his own flooring business in Lexington, earned a bachelor's degree in Kearney NE, taught industrial arts in Arnold and Hastings NE while also earning a Master's degree in three summers in Fort Collins CO, then ran a garage in Trumbull NE before moving to St. Cloud MN in 1965 to teach in the area vocational-technical school there. When Don retired in 1980, the two of them moved to Wabasso MN to be near their daughter Margaret and her family. In 2003 they moved to Caley House, in Princeton MN near their son Chuck, and later to the Foley Nursing Center. When Don died in January 2009, Emogene returned to Princeton, living at the Elim home where, in spite of the progression of Alzheimer's disease, she kept her gracious spirit, delighting staff and family alike with her megawatt smile. She died there peacefully on August 30, 2011. Emogene was a wife, mother and grandmother who first of all made sure each one in her family knew they were loved beyond measure. She also made sure they were warm, clean and getting their recommended daily allowance of fruits, vegetables, proteins, whole grains and dessert, even when the budget was tight. She made sure all birthdays were properly celebrated. The default celebration included homemade hand-cranked ice cream and a picture of the birthday person holding their decorated angel food cake with the age number showing, but personal requests were always honored to the best of her ability. She never wasted anything. She was a learner who enjoyed reading and got a lot of use out of the family encylopedia, encouraging--maybe insisting--- that you ¨look it up¨ when you had a question. Reading was a life long passion for her. She started reading when she was a child and read until she could no longer. She sat in trees to read and told that she got in trouble when she was a kid because she’d be hiding somewhere reading when she was supposed to be doing something else. The little kids remember her reading books to them in the summer…sitting on the couch in the afternoon reading classics, Little Women, Treasure Island. She set fair rules and modeled treating others the way you would like to be treated. If someone of any age ¨had problems¨ (i.e., either had a problem or was being a problem) she always tried to figure out what that person needed, what might help them. She believed in non-violent conflict resolution and worked hard at talking things out. She was a realist though: once when junior high boys kept pushing her grandson around in the hallways at school, she regretfully shook her head and said, ¨sometimes it just seems like you have to clobber 'em once before they'll stop it.¨ She was a lover of music—especially classical and opera---and enjoyed talking about books, music and new ideas. Early, she sang in the church choir. In the various towns she lived in, she was active in church women's activities, was a member of the Federated Women's Clubs, and volunteered with Friends of the Library. She enjoyed nature, especially watching birds and hiking. Emogene is survived by 2 sisters, Vera Hageman of Ithaca NE and Ruth Hatch of Alliance NE; her children Charles (Linda) of Princeton, Margaret of Sitka AK and Robert (Karen) of Rochester MN; 8 dearly loved grandchildren, 13 great-grandchildren and 3 step-great-grandchildren. She was preceded in death by her husband Donald; her parents; her sisters Florence and Arlene, her brother Paul and a brother who died in infancy.