In Memory

Valerie Ruehmann (Kite) - Class Of 1957 VIEW PROFILE

Valerie Ruehmann (Kite)

February 13, 1939 –November 17, 2012

By JOAN KITE

Devoted wife and mother, Valerie Elizabeth Ruehmann Kite, a life long learner with passions for great thinkers, fine writing, quality education, culinary exploration, and nature, died quietly in her home early Saturday morning on Nov. 17. She was 73.

An eternal optimist to the end, she finally succumbed to terminal breast cancer after bravely battling numerous health problems following a stroke in 2002.

“Somerset, Kentucky is a neighborhood loaded with bird feeders. It is the feast capital of bird-dom, I suspect,” Valerie wrote in her journal last year. “If reincarnation exists, wouldn’t it be lovely to return as one of those birds - not bound to a wheelchair, but flitting from limb to limb.”

Born in St, Louis, Missouri from immigrant and Yankee stock, Valerie embraced diversity and taught her three children to accept all people regardless of race, color or creed. She was a staunch advocate of education and a diligent student throughout her own academic career.

She demonstrated a natural gift in communication arts earning the title of Missouri State Champion in the National Spelling Bee. Valerie and her family moved to Atlanta, Georgia where she attended high school. She remembered her teachers fondly and displayed her typical sense of humor in one recollection regarding her Spanish teacher: “Mrs. Thompson, sedate, proper, and statuesque, put the romance in language when she married the Latin teacher.” In high school, she wrote for the school newspaper and was known as the “the girl from St. Louis who never knew the grammar rules, but who punctuated well because it sounded right.”

A National Merit Scholar, she attended the University of Chicago in 1957 and graduated from the Graduate School of Business in 1961 earning a dual bachelor’s and master’s degree in Business Administration.

It was also at the University of Chicago where she met the love of her life – a fellow classmate and political science major, Michael Kite. Following a two-year courtship on campus that involved minor reprimands from dormitory officials about staying out past curfew, Michael proposed to Valerie in a campus stairwell. A Unitarian minister married the couple in Bond Chapel at the University of Chicago on March 20, 1960. There first child, Mark, was born less than one year later.

The young family relocated to Michael’s hometown of Jacksonville, Florida where Valerie bore her only daughter daughter, Joan, and her youngest son, Kevin. She dedicated her energies to raising her three children and vowed that they would receive the best education that she could provide.

“If the school system couldn’t do it, she would do what it took to see that her children got a good education,” Michael said. “She had iron determination.”

The Kite family moved to Miami where Valerie learned to navigate school systems effectively and routinely challenged school boards. When a majority of parents picketed one elementary school over a controversial bussing issue, she marched her children past the angry picketers and straight into class.

“There were three students in class that day,” Joan recalled. “The experience reinforced my value in education, but more importantly, it taught me to be brave and courageous in the face of opposition.”

Valerie was a visionary in teaching her children to embrace other cultures long before the global economy became a reality. Instead of cooking a traditional turkey for Thanks giving every year, she selected a different country every year and crafted a holiday menu based on that country’s cuisine. Her children fondly remember the Italian Thanksgiving, the Greek Thanksgiving, and the beloved seafood fest (the ocean was a place, too) where the tried-and-tired stuffed turkey was supplanted with a magnificent spiny red Florida lobster.

A deeply spiritual person, Valerie saw beauty in all things living. She loved people, animals, and plants. Outgoing and gregarious, she remained active in her community volunteering to work local elections and participating in her local libraries, parks and museums.

“She had networks everywhere,” her husband said.

She had an innate green thumb and pocketed seeds from the vegetables and fruits that she ate, determined to return them to the earth and see them blossom again.

Valerie combined her communication and creative talents by developing marketing materials as a board member of the Florida Youth Symphony and the Dalmation Rescue.

Never fearful of technology, Valerie taught herself to become computer literate, acquiring desktop publishing skills and moving into social media in her later years. She was active on Facebook and stayed connected with friends on her Nook.

Michael and Valerie moved to Somerset, Kentucky and though she was bedridden, wheelchair-bound, and toward the end suffering from cancer, she participated in the Lunch Bunch , the Mystery Book Club, and other classes at the Pulaski County Library, and attended events at Senior Friends and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.

“I will always remember Valerie smiling and giggling. She had a wicked sense of humor,” Somerset friend Lori Yeager said. “She went out of this world on her own terms. She was so brave.”

Joan said she is so grateful to have be blessed with this special spirit as her mother. “My mother gave me the greatest gift of all - pure unadulterated unconditional love. I love her so much and miss her madly. Though she may have left this earth, she lives forever in my heart.”

Valerie was the keystone of the Kite family – a loving mother, a devoted wife, and a loyal friend. She knew what love was and showed it until her last breath.

She wrote in her journal, “Love is a tree planted, a blooming flower. Love is the wagging tail of a dog and the cold touch of a nose. It is a cat at the foot of the bed and dreaming dreams of birds on the wing. Love is recognizing the self in whom or what you love. It is budding roses and memories shared. It is a soft heart in a crunchy exterior with a gruff voice. It is a bended knee at proposal, a pushed wheelchair. It is the changing of a diaper, and the shared laughter of togetherness.”

Valerie Kite is survived by her husband, Michael, her only daughter, Joan, her oldest son Mark, her daughter-in-law, Cheryl Kite, their three grandchildren, Jessica, Michelle, and Nicholas and a great grandson, Justin, her youngest son Kevin, his wife Michelle, their two grandsons, Alex and Asher, and her brother, Albert Ruehmann.



 
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05/20/13 08:51 AM #1    

Valerie Ruehmann (Kite) (1957)

Metamorphosis

 

I can’t shake the image.

 

My mother bound to her wheelchair, bound to her own body. Cancer finally surfaced from the depths of her being stealing the use of her arms.

 

The final blow.

 

She had lost the use of her legs years before. The story goes she slipped between my father’s arms while he was trying to change her diaper. He put her to bed where she lay all night, her femur broken, in pain. The next day, my father called 911. My mother never walked, or tried to walk, again.

 

Now, my mother, who connected with the world through the TV remote control, her electronic book reader, and the telephone, had lost the power to make contact. Now, my mother, sitting in her wheelchair, her legs useless, her arms limp and immoveable, my mother, looked me square in my eyes.

 

Slowly, clearly, enunciating every word, she said,

 

“I want to die.”

 

A fog drifted into the room. My only mother was telling me, her only daughter, that she was ready to go. My only mother was telling me, her only daughter, to get ready. She was leaving. And she wanted to go.

My mother loved butterflies. All her life, she planted flowers, vines, plants, and trees to attract them, nurture them, raise them. She was enamored by their transformation from caterpillars into brilliantly colored creatures that flew away.

 

Now, she was in her own cocoon, drawing deeper inside herself. She was getting ready to fly away, too.

 

Laying in her bed, dying, that last day, my mother’s cocoon had completed itself. A shroud of morphine softened the pain of metamorphosis.

 

Now. I can’t shake the image.

 

Laying in that hospital bed, my mother, unable to move any part of her limbs, a prisoner from the neck down, wracked with pain, had become a caterpillar, had created a cocoon, was getting ready to transform and fly away.

 

The next day, she was gone. The emptied cocoon shipped to the crematorium.

 

She, finally free.

 

It is hard to find butterflies in the dark of winter.

 

Still I search for her. I yearn for her. I want to follow her.

 

We are both in the midst of metamorphosis. A new world – she on the other side – I, left behind, in the world without her.

 

We are making our way. Making our way for tomorrow


05/21/13 02:22 PM #2    

Ben Moon (1957)

God Bless and RIP, Val--remember you well from Mr. Warren's Sr. English class (the only "A" he gave that year).  Wonderful posting on the web site--I'm happy to see you've had a wonderful and fruitful life, and left the world with some wonderful young people.--Ben Moon


05/21/13 02:36 PM #3    

Diane Wilkes (Elrod) (1956)

I remember Valerie clearly. She was an interesting person from the first time I met her. I, too, remember Mrs. Thompson with great appreciation although I can't remember if Valerie and I were in the same Spanish class. Joan, you have honored your Mom so wonderfully by sharing her adult life with us all.

 Diane Wilkes Elrod, Class of 1956


05/21/13 02:44 PM #4    

Carole S. Fleming (1957)

Thank you, Joan, for sharing your thoughts and memories of your mom and  her last years and last days.  I, or course, remember her at 17 - a bright and gifted student, so sure of herself and her goals.  Because of your willingness to share your memories I can now also see her as a gifted and loving mother -  full of courage and heart, willing to live life fully and to face the end of life with awareness and openness.  How lucky you are to have had her as your mom! Thank you for allowing me to know her better than I ever did when we were young.  I am inspired by all you have shared and can see her qualities living and finding expression in you.

With appreciation,

Carole Fleming (Stephens)

carole.fleming1@gmail.com


05/21/13 02:58 PM #5    

Marnie Marshall (Brown) (1957)

I remember Valerie and how very smart she was.  It was so good to hear "the rest of the story"  An interesting one and not at all surprising.  She was an amazing person that will be missed by many.  My heart goes out to her children.  Valerie has been promoted.

Marnie Marshall Brown


05/21/13 03:56 PM #6    

Dan Bruce (1960)

As an eighth-grader in 1955-56, I was in awe of Valerie, the "brain" of the senior class that year and a National Merit Scholar. She set a wonderful example for all of us who wanted high school to be about more than proms and football games. College Park High School was a poorer learning environment after she graduated. On a personal note, she was always friendly and kind to me, taking my eighth-grader questions seriously and answering them with wisdom and, quite often, wit. She made me proud of being eager to learn by the example she set, and I have been a better person because I knew her early in my life.  


05/21/13 08:54 PM #7    

Barbara Coffey (Olsen) (1957)

What an amazing woman. I knew she was very intelligent. Didn't know about her strength and determination to make the world around her a better place. I absolutely love the stories about the different Thanksgivings. The journal entries you have shared show her depth of understanding for the essentials of life beyond calendars and to-do lists. Having cared for my husband, Andy, for the last three years before his death in April of this year, I also appreciated the care and love your father exhibited. Thank you for sharing this story of love, giving and strength of character over the years.


05/25/13 12:52 PM #8    

Valerie Ruehmann (Kite) (1957)

Thank you all who have posted comments here about my mother. You bring tears to my eyes and space to my heart. God bless you and yours. Truly.

 

And since I am writing under my mother's name, she too thanks you and sends you love and light from the other side.

 

With great love,

Joan Kite

joankite@gmail.com


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