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Ethel Marx Schauer
April 1, 1917-Sept. 12, 2005


Ethel Marx Schauer was among that generation to whom work was second nature. Born in Butler, Pa., on April 1, 1917, she married at age 17 and had her first child at 18 and her last, her fifth, at 35.

Wrapped around the raising of those four girls and a boy was a lifetime of toil, rarely carried out with complaint. In fact, Mrs. Schauer was known for her sense of humor. For years she clipped cartoons -- one-panel jokes were her favorite -- that sent her into roars of laughter, and put them in scrapbooks to laugh at again, or mailed them to people she knew would also enjoy them.

Her lightheartedness may have been compartmentalization, as well as her nature. Her husband, Willard, was a lifelong police officer, serving in the state police and heading a local police department, a job that took her family from place to place early in their marriage and more than likely offered many a story that was not funny at all.

At about 5 feet 4 inches tall, she did not make an impression in a room because of her height, but her beauty was well known. Her blonde hair was always coiffed, her clothes, while not always wildly fashionable, were polished:  She never left the house without her makeup on, and often wore heels and bright white shirts that set off her hair. Even into her 80s she appeared much younger than she was, her complexion staying pink.

Her grandchildren, who totaled 14 by the time she died at age 88, in September 2005, could count on her for wisdom. She dispensed it in gentle doses and at moments that resonated in memory for years: "Sheets are conductors of heat," she would say, in tucking in her grandchildren when they stayed over, a phrase they didn't understand, except that it was cozy sleeping on her screened back porch.

"You can find music in anything," she once said, pointing out the rhythmic slap, slap, slap of windshield wipers to her granddaughter while they were driving in the car on a rainy day.

Until well into her 70s, she threw a party each Fourth of July, which was also Dormont Day, in her duplex. She cooked and baked for days to make sure all of her family members were well-fed. She used an electric stove, no mean feat in her tiny kitchen, juggling pots and pans among the always-on burners, never scorching a thing.

She hung her laundry in the basement, and recycled most things plastic long before it was hip. She subscribed to "Prevention" and knew the value of supplements, and the "National Enquirer" was her guilty pleasure.  When in her 70s, Mrs. Schauer took a trip to California, a lifelong dream, and her vivacious personality caught producers' eyes and she appeared on "The Price is Right," running up on the stage to hug host Bob Barker.

She played the organ; a nightly card game of 500 with her husband at the dining room table; worked as a sales clerk, a real estate agent, even a private investigator.  Mrs. Schauer was proud of her time as a member of the now-defunct South Hills Women's Club, of which she served a term as president., and her involvement in several police auxiliary associations.

She buried two children, her eldest daughter  at age 61, and her only son, at age 51. Two weeks later her husband died.  Mrs. Schauer lived for four  years after that. She maintained vitality, as much as anyone in their mid-80s, but her heart, long given over to her family, was never quite whole again.

Ethel Marx Schauer was my grandmother.

-- Margi Shrum

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