My Grandmother Alice

Tomorrow we will attend my grandma’s funeral.

My grandmother, my mother’s mother, Alice Rissler, died on Sunday morning. She was ninety-one-years old, with limited mobility and an aching body. The week before she passed, her mind declined, and she lost the ability to talk, eat, and drink. Family or caregivers stayed with her around the clock.

So when she passed in the wee hours on May 4, we were thankful she was free from her suffering, yet at the same time, it’s still hard to believe she is gone.

Grandma was born in 1933, Alice Lillian Fox, the youngest in a family of fourteen.

Alice’s father, David, married twice. David’s first wife was pregnant with her ninth child when she died in the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918.

David hired an unmarried twenty-seven-year-old woman named Susanna Sensening to help care for his eight motherless children. Predictably, David and Susanna soon married, and they went on to have six more children. The Fox family had seven sons and seven daughters.

The Foxes lived in a large farmhouse which still stands today along Route 322 in Ephrata. The Christian Aid Ministries warehouse is now located on the farmland.

David farmed tobacco, like most other famers in Lancaster County at that time. Before refrigerated transportation and produce auctions, growing crops like strawberries wasn’t financially viable.

Susanna cooked tomato soup every evening for supper, an easy meal for the big family. As an adult, Alice disliked tomato soup, but during her last months, she requested that my mother fix her tomato soup, “And don’t forget to put baking soda in the tomato juice so the milk won’t curdle!” she instructed from her chair.

Because of WWII rationing, young Alice didn’t have many toys, so she would find a pear in the orchard and tie a string around it and then take her “pet” on a walk.

David forbad his daughters to ride bikes. “Girls don’t ride bicycles.” This attitude was common in late 1800s and early 1900s, and David had been born in 1882.

Alice wanted to ride a bicycle anyway, so she secretly taught herself with her brother’s bicycle in the barn. Once she ran into a wall and hurt herself, but she had to keep that a secret too.

Bicycle ban bending aside, Alice liked to follow social conventions. Like others of the Silent Generation, she was traditional, hard-working, and thrifty.

Alice married my grandfather, John M. Rissler in 1954, and they lived in Leola for the rest of their lives, raising six children. They first farmed, then my grandfather opened a cabinet shop, Rissler Custom Kitchens, which my uncle and cousins now run today. Grandma helped stain and varnish cabinets, gardened, and crocheted hundreds of doilies.

Grandpa died in 2017. They were lifelong members of the Groffdale Conference Mennonites (horse-and-buggy).

All of Grandma’s thirteen siblings, and their spouses, plus all of Grandpa’s siblings and spouses, have passed on. My grandmother was the last of that generation.

One of my favorite memories of Grandma is from 2022, when Mom and I took her to Fox Meadows Creamery after cleaning her house. Grandma had been excited about Fox Meadows opening in Leola. She had heard the Foxes who own the creamery have Mennonite roots and Grandma was certain they were her relatives. (In reality, the connection is pretty distant.)

Grandma seldom went out in public after Covid. At first, she was scared of the virus, and later going with her walker was just too difficult. So visiting Fox Meadows delighted her.

After we selected our ice cream (Grandma loved sweets all her life), we paid the Mennonite girl cashier. As we turned to walk to our seats, Grandma looked at the girl. “Who are your grandparents?” she asked.

Oh no, I thought. This girl is just a Fox Meadows employee. They probably have a hundred employees. There’s no connection at all, I’m sure.

The cashier looked puzzled but politely recited her grandparents’ names. One grandfather was named Lloyd Fox.

“That’s my nephew,” Grandma nodded, satisfied as she pushed her walker away.

“Grandma! I’m surprised she was related to you,” I said.

Grandma looked at me as though I was dense. “Of course. I knew she had to be a relative. She works here. The Foxes are all related.”

It was the last time Alice would ever go to a restaurant, and she left assured that her relatives were running the ice cream shop.

You can read Grandma’s obituary here. The photo at the top of this post is Grandma and my mother doing corn in about 1960.

"Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”