Geraldine (Gerry) Richard, who died Thursday when her home southwest of Emporia exploded and caught fire, was remembered this week by friends and neighbors. They took a few minutes to talk about her and the ways she had contributed to their lives. Richard’s funeral was held Monday.
Nancy Robohn, music instructor in the Emporia school district, remembered Richard as a helpful and encouraging member of a local quilting guild.
“The thing I remember most about Gerry was she was very, very faithful to come to all meetings,” Robohn said. “She would always go from table to table, helping all of us” with advice and hands-on assistance. “She was always there for everything.”
At quilt shows, “she’d be the first one there in the morning to help set up the standards and hang the quilts.”
Younger members worried about the elderly woman wanting to climb up to hang the heavy quilts, and tried to discourage her from being too active in the physical set-up of the show.
“It didn’t make any difference how early the show was,” Robohn said, “she was always clutching a bunch of quilts that she was going to hang.”
Another quilt guild member, Helen Ericson, talked about her friend’s talent for working with the complexities of miniature quilts, which measure approximately 15 to 18 inches.
“She made gorgeous miniature quilts with sunbonnet designs on them,” Ericson said. “That was her forte. They were so intricately done and so beautifully.
“When the shows came along she always had a large group of things to show, basically in the miniatures,” she said.
Richard’s personality made for pleasant exchanges at the guild meetings, too.
“She was always so cheerful and would laugh,” Ericson said.
Ericson was heartened to hear her friend’s granddaughter talking at the funeral service about the quilt on her bed that had been made by her grandmother.
“Evidently she shared them with her family, and sharing them with family is the most important thing with quilts, not just keeping them to yourself. She shared,” Ericson said. “She displayed, enjoyed, and passed them on to family.”
Betty and Herb Morgan lived near Gerry Richard and her husband, George, for about 13 years. Herb Morgan and Gerry Richard graduated from Emporia High School in the same class, and the acquaintance was a long one.
The Morgans and Richards were members of a group that played cards once a month.
“We used to go play cards at their house. ...There was quite a group of us,” Betty Morgan remembered. “She was always funny. She always found something to laugh about.”
Morgan recalled Richard as a hard worker who took care of a large garden and helped her husband farm.
“She was a nice person to be acquainted with,” Morgan said. “I think she worked real hard out there.”
Mary Alice Goodwin and Gerry Richard were friends in high school.
“I went out to their farm quite a bit. It was on 50 Highway,” Goodwin said. “We’d just ride horses and do stuff like that. It’s mostly high school that I remember having fun with her.”
As the women matured and had children and grandchildren, their contact became sporadic.
“We always visited when we’d meet each other,” Goodwin said. “I visited with her last Monday (Oct. 9) on the phone, and we visited for a long time...”
Goodwin hung up the telephone happy. They’d talked about their grandchildren — three of Goodwin’s grandchildren are doctors and Richard’s grandson was in medical school — and Goodwin said she told her husband about the conversation and the different tone in her old friend’s voice.
“Gerry sounded better than she had since her husband passed away, she just sounded so much better,” Goodwin said. “Her family just meant everything to her ...”
Former Lyon County Agriculture Agent A.E. (Pete) Maley saw another aspect of Gerry Richard and her family. “Gerry was a very close friend,” Maley said. “Her family was heavy into 4-H and they were outstanding. She and (her late husband) George were very much behind them.
“They were strong in beef, what I can remember, and they would always sit on the sideline and watch those kids in the show ring,” Maley said. “They were exceptionally good parents, interested in what their kids were doing.” Maley remembered well when the Richards built the new home on Road F.
“I remember landscaping their house when they had that new house put up over there,” Maley said. “When Gerry had any questions, she would come and ask me, and that was true up to the last.”
She “was kind of a quiet lady, but she was very, very appreciative of anything that you did for her, and particularly for her family. She was very proud of what they were doing,” he said.
Neighbor Gary Watts said he knew the Richards family “practically all my life. ... Back when I was in 4-H, I can remember having a 4-H picnic over there along the creek, and that’s been years ago.”
Watts farmed her land after George Richard died.
“George had told them when he was in the hospital that he didn’t think he would be able to farm any more and to get hold of me and see if I would do it,” he said.
The next summer, Watts harvested the wheat George Richard had planted the previous fall.
“He planted his own wheat when he was 89 years old,” Watts said. “And I farmed the rest of it and all of it since then.”
Watts and his wife, Becky, often took sweet corn to Richard, and when the orchard produced its crop, she would reciprocate by calling to say “‘We’ve got some peaches for you,’” Watts recalled.
He enjoyed dropping in to pay Richard for her share of the crop proceeds.
“She was scared to death that I wasn’t going to get paid for what I’d done over there,” Watts said. “She’d say, ‘Are you sure you got enough out of this?’”
Those visits usually lasted at least an hour, as the farming partners talked about the old neighborhood and changes they had seen, who owned certain pieces of ground years before, and who owned it now, Watts said. “She was full of history that way,” Watts said.
He remarked on her meticulous care of her lawn and garden.
“We’d see her when we went by, out in the yard, messin’ with her flowers,” Watts said, “or in the spring of the year, she’d have her little spray can. And she was death on dandelions.”
Richard kept to a routine, Watts said.
“When we’d come by there in the morning times, if the drapes were pulled on the left door, she was gone,” he said.
“You could almost set your clock with George also,” he said. “When George was alive, the doors on the big barn were always open, and when he died, the doors closed. I realize the necessity for doing that, but it was like a chapter in a book closed.”
When the house burned down Thursday, Watts said, “It’s like the book disappeared.”
Cindy Ringgold of Reflections Salon had a role in Richard’s routine on Friday. On Fridays, friends said, Richard always went to town to have her hair done, eat lunch and shop for groceries.
“I did her hair every Friday for years,” Ringgold said. “I got to know her family through her.”
Like other friends, Ringgold said that family was the center of existence for Richard.
“She was a very sincere lady, but she was a very private lady, too,” Ringgold said. “She loved her family. She always talked about them, all the things they did. She was very proud of her children and her grandchildren.”
Ringgold said it was obvious Richard’s home was her haven.
Sometimes, she skipped grocery shopping after her hair appointment, telling Ringgold that she just wanted to be at home.
“That was her most favorite place, to be in her home where her memories were.” Ringgold said.
Life was good, but it had not been the same since her husband George died about three years ago.
“She loved her husband so very much,” Ringgold said. “She really wanted to be with him. She had made peace a long time ago and we’d talked about it several times. She said, ‘I’m ready to go and I want to be with my husband.’”
That desire did not deter her from carrying on with her life and its responsibilities. Ringgold said that Richard had broken her heel a year or so ago and had been using a cane during recuperation. Still it did not stop her from tending her garden, though the garden was smaller; she talked about picking up limbs to keep her property tidy.
“Nothing kept her down. It didn’t matter; she was going to get out there and get it done anyway,” Ringgold said.
“She was very determined, very much so. And I loved her so much.”