Carol Ruth Jertson Riddlesperger (April 4, 1918-August 19, 2022)

Carol Jertson Riddlesperger led a model life.  She was motivated by family, faith, education, and the constant pursuit of social justice.  Wickedly smart, she brought skill and grace to any task she undertook. She died at the age of 104 on August 19, 2022, having spent her last day with her four children and their spouses in laughter and tears together.

Born in the small farm village of Hazel Run, Minnesota on April 4, 1918 in the days before homes had electricity, she learned to read by the flickering light of kerosene lamps. Fresh well water was available just across the street, and an outhouse stood in back.  Her yard was surrounded in the summer by corn stalks and the constant ado in her back yard came from her father's prize Wyandotte chickens.  Life in Hazel Run revolved around the town's white steepled Lutheran Church which reflected its citizens' Norwegian heritage. A signature holiday was Memorial Day; as a teen Carol recited "In Flanders Fields" on that occasion, as she would do from memory all her life.

When Carol was fifteen, during the throes of the Great Depression, her father died of cancer leaving the family without an income.  Her mother, a college educated teacher before marriage, was precluded from going back to the classroom by law. Carol bristled at the unfairness but decided, as she always would, to "make the best of the situation" while seeking social justice.  Her family moved to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where her mother took a menial job.  Carol stayed behind, living with relatives, to finish high school as class valedictorian.  She then joined her mother and sister Eula to attend Augustana College, her cherished alma mater.

After two years as a teacher in Hills, Minnesota, Carol took a job at the Air Base in Sioux Falls as World War II preparations mounted.  There she met the love of her life, Jim Riddlesperger, who had been drafted into the Army Air Corps soon after the Pearl Harbor attack.  He greeted her in his soft Texas drawl with the line "You need to meet me."  Their romance played out during training in Sioux Falls and then by extensive correspondence. They wed on Easter Sunday, April 1, 1945, just before he flew off to fight in the Pacific War.

After the war, they relocated to Texas where she taught elementary school and took graduate library science courses while Jim did his graduate work at the University of Texas.  In Austin, they began their family and embraced life's adventures.  After serving a deployment during the Korean War in Puerto Rico, they moved to Denton where Jim became a professor at North Texas State College and Carol joyfully threw herself into motherhood. She nurtured her charges—often greeting her children and their Panhandle Street neighborhood friends with a home-made treat.  But she was challenging as well, prodding her children daily with the exacting question "What have you accomplished today?"

She also became active in the First Methodist Church, where she was selected as a delegate to the 1968 General Conference when the Methodist Church joined with the United Brethren Church.  She served in numerous leadership roles for well more than half a century along with many of her lifelong friends.

When her younger children reached high school, Carol brought her skills to professional life, as director of the 1970 U.S. Census in Denton, as a two-term member of the Denton ISD School Board, as the founding director of the Retired Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP), as President of the Business and Professional Women's Club, and as a founding and sustaining member of the Denton Women's Christian Interracial Fellowship.  Highlights of her later life were receiving the Alumni Achievement Award from Augustana College and having the RSVP community service award named in her honor.

In 2007, she moved to the Denton Good Samaritan Village where she proved a "good shepherd," being active in many activities and supporting the building of the chapel. She especially adored the health professionals who cared for her with gentle affection over the last few years.

She was preceded in death by her husband Jim and son-in-law Gary Kirchoff, and is survived by her children and spouses—Carol Kirchoff Phillips (Ross), Terry Boyd (Dan), Jim Riddlesperger, Jr. (Kris), and Lee Ann Ellington (Don).  She was the adored "Grammy" to thirteen grandchildren and twenty great grandchildren, each one whom she loved "to the moon and back."

A memorial service will be held in her memory on September 10, 2022 at 11:00 AM in the sanctuary at First United Methodist Church.  Her ashes will be interred at the columbarium at the church immediately next to her beloved husband. Memorials can be made to the United Women in Faith at First United Methodist Church, Denton, to the North Texas Food Bank, or to a charity of your choice.

"To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields."