CHARLENE M. HUBACH

Charlene M. Hubach, age 91, of Raymore, Missouri, passed away on Friday, February 8, 2019 surrounded by her loving family.

A Visitation Service will be held from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. on Wednesday, February 13, 2019 followed by a Funeral Service at 11:00 a.m. at St. Paul's United Methodist Church, 1111 W. Foxwood Dr., Raymore, Missouri 64083. A Burial will take place following the Funeral at Raymore, Cemetery in Raymore, Missouri.

Charlene Mardell Hays Hubach was born on May 30, 1927 in Latham, Missouri. My grandparents, lived in Raymore but Grandmother Hays wanted to go home to Latham to have her first child so Pappy paid a neighbor to drive her to Latham and bring her and their new daughter home. Other than that little detour, Mother has lived her entire life in Raymore. Mother started helping her mother in the post office when she was only 12 years old and worked there part-time until she became Postmaster when my grandmother retired. She worked there until shortly before her retirement when she was transferred to the main Post Office in Kansas City. By working, both my mother and grandmother were certainly ahead of their times. I remember her coming home one day quite upset because, during a review of her office, her supervisor made a comment about small post offices and how the women who ran them had plenty of time to do their ironing in the back room.

Mother was salutatorian of her high school class. Coming into the last few weeks she was actually valedictorian but a grade school teacher was sick so the Principal of the school asked her father, who was head of the school board, if she could be the substitute teacher. Pappy agreed but Mother missed a test or two and ended up salutatorian. Mother started college at the old Kansas City College, but Dad, marriage, and family intervened and the school had become the University of Missouri at Kansas City by the time she finally got her degree in Urban Affairs in 1971, a year after I graduated from college. This too, was unusual because most of the folks in her class were lawyers working on advanced degrees. Mother said she tried always to look like a poor, struggling housewife in tennis shoes so the professors felt sorry for her.

After they married in 1947, Mother and Dad lived in an older, one bedroom house on 80 acres on the east side of what is now Lucy Webb Road and J Highway. Over the years Mother kept busy helping. She would assist her mother in the Post Office, particularly around Christmas, until it became a full time job. For a time she and Dad had a dairy herd and she raised the "bobby" calves; calves taken away from their dairy mothers and raised by hand. Dad worked full time and they raised registered Polled Hereford and Angus cattle, hogs, and sheep. I think some of my most vivid memories involve the smell of baby lambs being gently warmed over the heat registers. Mom also worked as a clerk or judge for each election. She inherited her father's interest in politics and her mother's interest in gardening although I think it wasn't until the move to the new house on Hubach Hill that she really got to exercise her flair for gardening. As I said, the old house had one bedroom, but not for long. I was born in December of the same year. Then Wesley was born two years later. There we were, all four in the same bedroom. Wes and I shared a twin bed with one of us at the head and the other at the foot. I'm not exactly sure of the timing but Dad came home one night to find Mother had knocked a hole in the outside wall of the house. He got the message and an addition of three more bedrooms and a bathroom ultimately followed.

When the bookmobile from the county library came to town in the summer, it parked in front of the post office/barber shop. The whole family read, a tradition Mother followed until her death. She always laughed and says she planned to read at least one book by every author in the library before she dies, and she probably did. In the last few years she simply turned up at the bookmobile with the books she had read and the librarians had a stack waiting for her because they knew her tastes so well. Although Mother was involved in many things, I don't think you will ever hear anyone brag about her cleaning or cooking skills. To clean, Mother always started in the bedrooms and worked her way to the kitchen. The end result was immaculate bedrooms, pristine closets and drawers, and a kitchen full of stuff. Dad had brought home some one piece, wool, women's army fatigues from the war Mother wore outside for gardening. I remember as a teen, coming home on the school bus to find Mother working outside in one of my old, blue, one-piece gym uniforms with a tweed toilet seat cover on her head to protect her hair.

It wasn't as if Mother couldn't cook; it simply wasn't something she liked doing and Mother always had other things she would rather do. Mother's pies were exceptional and she frequently used whatever was on hand which resulted in some unusual combinations. The problem was she never quite figured out how to time the cooking so everything came out at the same time. It wasn't uncommon to eat dessert first and the meat last or start with the vegetable. Mother also had a love/hate relationship with the big, chest type deep freeze. She was so short she got herself trapped once trying to bend over and clean the inside. Bent double over the edge, she couldn't leverage herself out. So I learned to cook early. My brother Wesley always said everyone was grateful when I finally learned to cook.

About 40 years ago Mom and Dad moved to the house on the hill saying they had always wanted a two story home. Mother and Clay still lived there until she moved into assisted living at Foxwood Springs in January.

As the first grandchild Mother likes to tell about the beautiful clothes she made me. I'm sure they started out that way but what I remember is not the beautiful smocking or the embroidery, but the pins. Mother, like most women in the 50s, made a good portion of our clothing. Unfortunately she had a tendency to procrastinate and I remember leaving for camp with her still hemming the dress I was wearing in the car on the way to the bus. Upon reflection, I better appreciate just how busy she was: raising four children, being active in the community, being a partner to my Dad, working part-time, and going to school to finish her degree.

Mother is also something of a "joiner" and anything she joined, she made a success. She was everything from a room mother, to secretary and publicity chairman to PTA president for years, taught Sunday School at the Raymore Methodist Church, helped found the Garden Club and the Raymore Historical Society where she has been an enthusiastic member, and a quilt club. She was Alumni president for two terms and served as the city's representative to the Administrative Board of the Cass County Chapter of the Red Cross. She was active in all aspects of the Raymore Community Betterment program and in October of 1969 received a Governor's Leadership Award and was instrumental in Raymore receiving a Distinguished Achievement Award at the National Congress on Beautification in 1970. I think her work with Community Betterment led directly to her membership in Planning and Zoning and ultimately to the Raymore City Council. Mother ran for Mayor in 1999, losing by only 190 votes. The new mayor appointed her to Planning and Zoning in 2000 where she served for three years before running for Ward 4 Councilor. She served four 2-year terms until she was defeated by seven votes. The following year she ran for the other Ward 4 seat, and has served four more years for a total of twelve years. I asked her what she considered her greatest successes. She looks at her insistence on road improvements, from a turn lane from 58 to J and asphalting the gravel roads east of J Highway, to handicapped access ramps on all of the older streets and more street signs and larger street name signs and her biggest successes although her love of books made it easy to push for a bookmobile after the library branch was lost. She has also written numerous ordinances on everything from sidewalks to annexation.

Once Mother retired, she and Dad began to travel. In his obituary Mother notes Dad had been to over twenty foreign countries. Naturally, since she traveled with him, except for some wartime adventures she has seen those same countries. They loved to cruise and once took a Russian cruise line doing a first ever cruise of the east coast of the US. Many of the pictures I have of the two of them together over the years before Dad died were either taken at the beginning or during a trip.

Mother was capable of most of the so called gentle arts. She canned produce from her garden,she could knitting, crochet, sew and tatt and examples of her work were scattered among the children but, once she had created one or two items, seemed to lose interest. Only gardening, playing the piano, and politics were her most long standing passions. The five acres surrounding our house was filled with flowers and unusual trees. Playing the piano was probably her only disappointment. She loved to play and we always had a piano but Mother readily admitted she didn't have the natural rhythm it took to be really successful. Mother's hair began to thin over the years. Many women turn to wigs when this happens, but not mother; she turned to hats. Over the years she has acquired dozens and dozens of hats of all different shapes and sizes, for all seasons, and was never seen without one. Some she bought and others were given to her by friends and family and a few are handmade. At the moment she has well over fifty. Mother believes those hats are how people recognize her and has constituents tell her they watch the televised council meetings just to see what hat she has on. Mother never left home without a hat. Even when we convinced her to move to Foxwood, she continued to wear her favorites and was already talking about getting her spring hats. Mother's major handicap has been her deafness. She had a severe ear infection as a youngster and remembers having hearing problems as a high school senior. Mother had a hearing specialist tell her the white streak in her hair was a sign of a genetic hearing weakness and family members should have their hearing tested. It never stopped her from doing what she thought was important and may actually have helped her focus as there were no distractions to interfere with what she loved to do.

Mother admitted she got through council meetings by studying the material in the weekly packets very carefully, reading lips, and not engaging in public discussion. After years of wearing special amplification devices at council meetings, in 2015, she had cochlear ear implants. Usually this is done for much younger patients as the mechanisms are tricky and learning can be a bit difficult for older folks, just not Mother. She sailed through the surgery and was delighted when she could begin to hear conversations again although telephones and television are still difficult.

Through it all, and other than my father, Mother's one true love has been for Raymore. It isn't so much she doesn't care about the comings and goings of her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, it is just her overarching concern is the next council meeting or something she read in the paper. When she could still hear well enough to call, we talked about planning issues in Oregon or how my time as a city counselor differed from hers and I still get email about engineering related issues affecting the city. She often contacted her oldest grandson, Jonathan (Wesley's son) about technical planning issues as Jon was a planner for Plano, Texas and is currently working in Economic Development for Dallas, Texas. Mom once told me she gets tired of doing many activities and moves on, except for politics and she never gets tired of it, frustrated maybe, but never tired.

Over the years, perhaps combining her love of politics with her abiding faith, Mother has consistently demonstrated what she calls the Methodist Social Doctrine. To her it wasn't about prayer circles or candlelight vigils or marching through the streets. It was about carrying petitions, going door to door, running for office and writing letters to the editor. Through the years Mother was involved in her community through the church, school and city. She cared deeply for good government, schools, libraries, parks, and community centers, all the things it takes to make a community grow and prosper. Although age slowed her a bit, the mind capable of fashioning a city charter and arguing for senior housing and walkable neighborhoods was still as active as ever until just about a week ago.

Mother is survived by her daughter, Joselyn (Me), three sons, Wesley and his wife Nancy of Thayer, Missouri, Dessa and his wife Glynette of Springfield, Missouri, and Clay of the home. There were six grandchildren, Arianne, Jonathan, Bryan, Zachary, Kile, and Haidee, and four great-grandchildren, Luke and Landon, Adelynn and Charlee. Just before she died Bryan and Luke visited her. She told Luke the one thing she wanted him to remember is that he had a Great Grandmother with one brown eye and one green eye. I think the rest of us will remember much, much more.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be given to the Raymore Historical Society, P.O. Box 1483 Raymore, Missouri 64083.

Arrangements: Cullen Funeral Home, Raymore, Missouri 816.322.5278