Published: May 30, 2008 10:10 pm            

Rose Lee Grimm

Rose Lee (Odetta) Grimm, a longtime resident of Pauls Valley, passed away peacefully on April 21, 2008, at the age of 92 in the presence of a music therapist and the hospice chaplin at Augustana Home in Minneapolis which is across the street from the hospital where her son, Richard Grimm Jr., is employed as a physician.

Rose was born on January 8, 1916 in the tiny town of Edhube in NE Texas not far from Bonham where she graduated from high school. As a youngster she lived on a farm where her father died when she was 5 years old and her mother when she was 12.

Rose lived with aunts and uncles and helped out around the house until she went to live with her older sister Annie in Ada, Oklahoma where she found work as a waitress.

In Ada, she met a handsome young man, Richard H. Grimm, who worked as an oil well supply salesman. Dick was an early “barnstormer” who flew with Wiley Post.

Rose and Dick married in 1937 and moved frequently to follow the oil boom (Oklahoma, Kansas, W. Texas, New Mexico and Indiana). In Indiana in 1939 their first child, Janice Diana Grimm was born.

While living in Oklahoma City during WW II, Rose pitched in on the war effort by working in an arms factory. On August 22, 1946 their second child, Richard H. Grimm Jr. was born.

Soon after, the family moved to Pauls Valley, Oklahoma where they settled in a small former ranch house right across the street from Bob Hammond’s “Pig Shop,” the popular gathering place now owned by Susan and Phil Henderson.

In the summer of 1948 while Dick was working at a Garvin County oil well, a discarded cigarette ignited a huge fire in a surrounding gas field.

Dick escaped the fire but went back in to try to rescue a young woman still surrounded by flames. The woman did not survive, and Dick passed away in the Pauls Valley Hospital 10 days later with third degree burns on over 90 percent of his body. Dick was awarded the “Carnegie Medal for Heroism” posthumously which Rose passed on to Janice.

Rose was active in the community as a member of the “Mothers’ Study Club” and the First Methodist Church where for years she enjoyed the Bible study class.

Richard and Jeanne now cherish the well worn family Bible. Rose enjoyed creative writing, reading astrology books, fishing and watching for flying saucers.

Rose worked for 25 years at the Pauls Valley State School for the developmentally disabled. She lived in Pauls Valley for 60 years where she was liked and loved by many.

She was probably best known for her quick wit and sense of irony. Truly one of a kind, Rose has been missed in Pauls Valley since she left 13 years ago to be cared for by Janice in Tulsa and by Richard and Jeanne in Minneapolis.

During her last months, family friend Shamsa Bowman, whose prayer vigils helped to ease Rose’s passage, was a frequent visitor.

Rose is survived by her daughter Janice Roan who taught English as a Second Language in Tulsa, her son Dr. Richard H. Grimm Jr. and daughter-in-law Jeanne Dowd Grimm of Minneapolis as well as her three grandchildren, Heather and Richard Roan of Tulsa and Richard H. Grimm III of Minneapolis. Rose’s adopted grandsons, Max Ormond and Will Clark (Jeanne's sons) will miss her as well.

Memorial services will be held Saturday, May 31, 2008 at 11 a.m. at the Stufflebean Chapel of Remembrance in officiated by Rev. J.A. Hazlitt.

Interment of Cremains will be a family service at the Stroud Cemetery. Arrangements are under the direction of Stufflebean-Coffey Funeral Home.

Notes of Remembrance and/or Condolences may be sent to the family at www.stufflebeanfuneralhome.com.

        

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