Charlotte Joan Zittelman

Charlotte (Steidl) Zittelman

Monday, 02 July 2007

Charlotte Joan Zittelman (nee Steidl), 85, daughter of Berte (nee Hauge) and Ferdinand Steidl, died Saturday, June 30, 2007, at the Sheyenne Care Center in Valley City under the care of Hospice of the Red River Valley.
...
Although Charlotte's life began and ended in the Great Plains, her choices throughout her life presented her with unique opportunities, and led her and her family down many unexpected paths.Her influence continues to be felt, as she passed onto her children and grandchildren a tolerance and openness to other cultures, as well as an appreciation for travel and zest for adventure. Charlotte spent her early years in Minnesota with her parents before they moved to Fingal, North Dakota for her junior high and high school.Her friends recall her lifetime passion for small feisty dogs, and her granddaughters fondly remember her stories of riding Dick, the white gelding, across the sloughs and fields to high school.She played in the band at Fingal High School graduating in 1938, and it was while playing piano with a local band at a barn dance that she met her husband, Roy Glenn Zittelman.They married in January 1941, and she often reminisced that although blizzards and an incident with a tipped sleigh blocked their way several times that winter, they ultimately succeeded in tying the knot.
...
Family was all important to Charlotte, and keeping hers together was her primary objective.
...
Charlotte spoke Norwegian thanks to an elderly relative who refused to learn English, and both she and Roy spoke German well enough to earn the friendship and appreciation of the Germans with whom they worked in Frankfurt, Dexheim and Karlsruhe.It was in Karlsruhe that Charlotte married off her daughter Kay to a military engineer.Charlotte's skills as a seamstress were put to good use at this point: she made her daughter's wedding dress, decorating it in fine Spanish lace purchased during a family trip to Paris in 1961.
...
Charlotte's granddaughters' creativity and decorative abilities blossomed during those long summers spent closeted with their grandmother in Charlotte and Roy's carriage house in Valley City, cutting and sewing to create masterpieces.The owl pillow and purple kangaroo that she gave to her grandchildren remain treasured memories of childhood, along with the hand-sewn Christmas ornaments and nativity calendar.Later in life Charlotte put her creative skills to good use making quilts for the Lutheran World Services and ceramics. Every year she and Roy planted more flowers and trees on their lot in Fingal, and she delighted in decorating the outside walls with gentle scenes from St Francis of Assisi and his animal friends.The rocks that they had collected over the decades were shaped and sculpted into magnificent treasures and Charlotte began speaking to local students on the joys of rock-hounding. Charlotte was known for her feistiness and self-admitted ,bull-headedness', which manifested itself in unique ways throughout her life.When Roy once ran for political office in North Dakota, Charlotte had not wanted to tell him ,no' yet dreaded a role as a politician's wife.
...
Charlotte will be missed by all who knew her.