Marie Knaupp

Marie's Celebration of Life service was recorded, and is available for viewing here:
https://www.viewlogies.net/restlawn/7dinEWVUU?pin=074991

You may view Marie's Video Life Tribute here:
https://www.tributeslides.com/tributes/show/QHC9GHNDSQ3GJ659

MARIE'S LIFE STORY

Marie Knaupp, 98, went to be with Jesus on December 16, 2021, after a prolonged struggle with Parkinson’s. Marie was born at home in the Fairview community near Airlie, south of Monmouth on September 30, 1923, to Ed and Hilda Fleischman. She grew up on a prune farm with her younger brother LeRoy.

For grades 1-8 she attended a one-room schoolhouse in Fairview and graduated from Monmouth High School as salutatorian of her class. After earning a 3-year teaching certificate at Oregon College of Education, she taught elementary music and 4th grade at Morrison School in Dallas for 2 years. Feeling called to prepare for missionary service, she enrolled in BIOLA, earning a 3-year degree in Bible and music followed by 1 more year at OCE where she completed her BS in education.

Following her last day of finals, Marie had her first date with George Knaupp to the Salem Academy Christmas program. In January, she went to the Sudan Interior mission home in South Pasadena to prepare for mission service in Ethiopia. Every day she got a letter from George. In just one week, she knew that she didn’t fit and returned home.

Six months later, on June 30, 1950, she married George and lived on a dairy farm south of Monmouth where her four children, John, Mark, Ruth, and Esther, were born. She and George led the junior department at Monmouth First Baptist and she played the organ for services. She also began having Bible clubs in her home which she continued when the family moved to Greenwood Road, Independence, in 1959 after George had a warning heart attack. They purposely moved there so the children could attend Salem Academy. Later Marie and George led the junior department at First Baptist in Salem.

Raising her family in the country, Marie became an expert in gardening, canning, preserving fruits and vegetables, sewing, and knitting. Wanting to pass these skills on to their children, she and George started many 4-H clubs, including kids from the neighborhood. Preparing exhibits at county and state fairs became a big part of many summers and contributed to the bank accounts of the children.

George died of a heart attack on April 11, 1967, and in the fall, Marie began volunteering in the Salem Academy library where John and Mark attended. She eventually was asked to teach sophomore Bible and junior high English and was hired the following year never having been interviewed or filling in a job application. After being encouraged by Barbara Fadel, the librarian, to go back for her master’s degree she began taking night classes and graduated in 1971 from OCE (now WOU) with a master’s in Educational Media. She retired in 1988 after 20 years at Salem Academy where she taught junior high English and was the elementary and junior high librarian. In 2010 she was inducted into the SA hall of fame.

In the summer of 1974, everything changed. At the beginning of June, immediately after finishing her school year, she had the first of four total hip replacement surgeries. On June 30, she walked down the aisle on John’s arm and a crutch at Ruth’s wedding to Jerry Hoffman, her favorite son-in-law. In August, John moved to begin his teaching career at Calvary Christian School in Forrest City, Arkansas; in September, Esther moved to Newberg to begin her first year of college at George Fox. Marie was left on the farm with Mark and her Siamese cat, Dinga.

After graduating from OCE in 1978, Esther left Oregon and joined John to begin teaching in Arkansas. Six years later in 1984, everything changed again. On March 11, Mark got married and Marie began planning to move into a brand new condominium in Monmouth so Mark could live on the farm. On June 2, John married Judy, Esther’s housemate of six years in Arkansas, and Esther returned home to become the first librarian at Santiam Christian School, located at Camp Adair. Marie and Esther would be housemates for the next 37½ years.

That summer, Marie and Esther organized a crew of parents and students, and donated 100 hours each to catalog and process the books for the new library in order to meet accreditation requirements the following spring. For the next 4 years, Marie continued working at Salem Academy, while Esther worked at Santiam Christian.

When Marie retired from Salem Academy in 1988, she began volunteering at Salem First Baptist, organized a crew, and cataloged the libraries for both the church and Sonshine Christian School and retired for a second time in 1994. One summer she and Esther even helped catalog books for the library at a Christian school near Yakima, Washington. She then began volunteering at Santiam Christian to help Esther in her library. She cataloged and mended library books and textbooks one or two days a week. When the computerized library system changed, she brought her old library crew and cataloged and processed the entire Santiam Christian elementary school library. She was even there to help direct the moving of the high school library to a new facility across campus in 2011 when she was 87 years old. She was over 90 years old when she retired for the third time.

Music was a very important part of Marie’s life as she had both a minor and major in music. She took piano lessons as a child paying partially with a bucket of eggs each week, and she began playing piano and later the organ for services at the Monmouth First Baptist Church which would continue for the next two decades. At BIOLA, a highlight was singing weekly on the radio in a women’s trio. Later, she would set scripture to music for the children in her Bible club. For years she sang in the church choir making many close friendships. Marie’s first piano was a wedding gift from George; later they purchased an organ. She enjoyed many hours playing her piano and organ and taught her children piano lessons, some with more success than others.

Marie loved traveling, taking 5 major trips including a Mediterranean cruise in 1979 with John and Esther, and a trip in 1984 to Scandinavia and Germany where she attended the passion play in Oberammergau taking her 85-year-old mother. In 1988 she went on a Nashville Southeast USA trip which included the Grand Ole Opry, Gatlinburg, Disney World and Epcot, and the Kennedy Space Center. The highlight of a Canadian Maritime Provinces trip in 1992 was visiting PEI and the home of Anne of Green Gables. Finally, in 1993, she would take 11-year-old granddaughter Joni Marie Hoffman to the Holy Land. Joni would ask her parents before leaving if they would sleep in tents while traveling.

In addition, she would take 4 trips to Arkansas to see John and Esther, go on 6 Hawaiian vacations with Mark’s family, and enjoyed annual summer vacations to the beach and Oregon coastal lakes for over 2 decades. With her compromised hips, camping trips with Ruth and Jerry’s family were not an option; but trips to the beach and frequent backyard visits were a highlight for many years.

Mom always loved working in the yard and garden and spent time in her specially designed garden house writing many of the books and stories that blossomed as a result of the writing class she enjoyed at the senior center in Monmouth. Under the pseudonym Spring Gardenhaus she ultimately completed 66 books including 2 autobiographies, Branch from an Old Prune Tree and The Pruning of the Branch and 2 autobiographical fiction books The Prune Tree Twins and Greenwood Daze. She would also write 6 series including Kris and Kim of the Wetland, God Is and Does, Golden Glimpses, Nutty Nuggets, Buddy Button, and the Christmas Challenge Series.

The greatest focus of our mom’s life was her family. Coming to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ at a young age influenced every aspect of her life. She poured all of her energy into raising her four children, expanding that to include grandchildren and great-grandchildren. One example we just discovered was when we learned that she wrote a letter every week to her granddaughter Kristin in her first year of college at George Fox, knowing how difficult change had always been for Kristin. Having once felt called to be a missionary, she was convinced that her mission field was her own family, and she lived that to her last breath.

Marie is survived by her children, John (Judy) Knaupp of Rickreall; Mark (Casey) Knaupp of Rickreall; Ruth (Jerry) Hoffman of Dallas; Esther Knaupp of Monmouth; six grandchildren; eight great-grandchildren and brother LeRoy Fleishman of Lake Oswego.

A Celebration of Life is planned for Saturday, January 8, 2 pm at Restlawn Funeral Home, 201 Oak Grove Rd NW, Salem, OR 97304. Private interment will be next to her husband at Fir Crest Cemetery, Monmouth, OR.

Donations in Marie’s honor may be made to Santiam Christian School . Farnstrom Mortuary is caring for the family.