Welcome to What We Remember, our reader-submitted obituary series. Submit your story for next Sunday’s installment here.
Joanne Bell, 89
Ronald Reagan’s nurse
Mom accomplished what many Americans dream of but few ever manage: She looked a president in the eye and told him to shut up. And he did.
It was 1981, and President Reagan was recovering from a gunshot wound at George Washington University Hospital. He was tired and medicated yet inclined to conversation. When the room finally quieted, Mom, his recovery room nurse, placed gauze over his eyes to block the hallway light. Reagan removed it. Mom put it back. Reagan removed it again.
Big mistake.
“Mr. President,” she said, “in the most polite way I can tell you, when I put this over your eyes, that means I want you to shut up and go to sleep.” Reagan winked and closed his eyes.
This was Mom’s way: gentle when needed, firm when she had to be. It worked on a president and it worked on her four children.
Joanne Eller Bell treated Reagan after he was shot outside the Washington Hilton on March 30, 1981. She died Aug. 27 in Fleming Island, Florida. — By her son Robert Bell
John Hemcher, 76
The art of lawn care
My friend John was meticulous about lawn care and landscaping, not just on his own home, but also on the beautiful grounds of the campus where he worked. He made sure the equipment was always in tip-top shape.
Many local kids, including my brother Bob and me, cycled through his grounds crew during the summer to earn money during high school and college. He showed us the ropes on how to rotate mowing cycles and manicure lawns and fields so that they were serene and artful, with fine edges and patterns that stood out and made people notice. We mowed acres and acres of grass.
John appreciated the simple things in life, like a well-cared-for lawn. We carry that lesson forward.
John Charles Hemcher was a purchasing manager and grounds-crew mentor at the American Institute for CPCU. He died Aug. 20 in Chester Springs, Pennsylvania. — By his friend Roger Glendenning
Carol Middleton, 78
A black belt in pink
Discipline. Respect. Positive expectancy. These were the values Grandmaster Carol Middleton infused into all her classes at the D.C. Self Defense Karate Association.
Sensei was a seventh-degree black belt in taekwondo, a gifted teacher and a commanding presence, despite the fact that when she wasn’t in a martial arts uniform, she dressed head-to-toe in pink. She was a pioneer in practical self-defense instruction and forged new paths as a woman coming up in the almost exclusively male world of martial arts in the 1960s and ’70s.
At DCSDKA, you could find all of us sweating, training and enjoying kicking and punching with power and precision, pushing through challenges and doing more physically than we ever thought possible. With her help, we grew more confident, patient and determined. Her students came away with skills for a lifetime, no matter how long they trained with Sensei.
She changed lives. Her impact endures.
Carol Ann Middleton founded the D.C. Self Defense Karate Association in 1976. She died Aug. 11 in Chantilly, Virginia. — By her students Lyn Stoesen, Caroline Polk, Lauren Taylor and Maggie Hume
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The Post is publishing reader-submitted obituaries as part of a weekly feature, What We Remember.
The post The nurse who chided Reagan in the hospital, and other lives we’ve lost appeared first on Washington Post.
