Oct. 18, 2026
Welcome to What We Remember, our reader-submitted obituary series. Submit your story for next Sunday’s installment here.
Barbara Gillette Price, 87
The artist’s way
When I was in my mid-20s, back from two years traveling Europe with a backpack and magenta hair, my mother asked me to put the stamps and address labels on postcards for an upcoming art exhibition. The image on the front was from her water lily painting series. I haphazardly slapped stamps and stickers onto the blank side until she stopped me.
“Mich,” she said, “everything, including the stamps, represents me as an artist.”
I began paying attention to details in her artwork. To where she placed plants in her studio. To the juxtaposition of color and texture in her jewelry and clothes. Each element appeared naturally as part of her world, from the way she entered a room to the friendships she amassed over decades and geography. The artist’s way, I saw, was more than my mother’s lifestyle. It was her entire being.
Barbara Gillette Price was an artist and educator. She died April 24 in Granada, Spain. — By her daughter Michelle Tamara Cutler
Jeff Oeser, 72
A deployment in Saudi Arabia
Dad valued character — moral traits that define how a person thinks, feels and behaves. He saw it as the sum of a person’s repeated actions; we become what we do. He lived this, dedicating 28 years of his life to uniformed service. As a commanding Army officer deployed to Saudi Arabia in 1999, his unit was ordered to establish a tactical site on grounds that harbored hazardous waste. He fought for his soldiers’ safety, telling his superiors to move the site. And before that deployment was over, he made sure his Muslim soldiers had the opportunity to visit Mecca. He proudly displayed in his office the Zamzam holy water they gifted him.
He died of metastatic urothelial cancer, presumably resulting from his service. Before he passed, I read him letters his soldiers sent over the years, each expressing thanks, grateful for his leadership as a man of character.
Jeff Oeser was a retired Army colonel and professor at the Army Command and General Staff College. He died Aug. 26 in Spotsylvania, Virginia. — By his daughter Jackie Munn
Mary Beth Rampolla, 64
Beauty in a bathroom door
My sister once asked me to take a picture of the fractured acrylic push panel on a public restroom door. I knew details obsessed her, that design was her oxygen. So I shrugged and clicked. When I studied the photo later, a constellation as intricate as an ice crystal bloomed before my eyes. Mary Beth had found beauty in the broken.
I never asked if the pattern inspired her commercial showrooms, brand development or the children’s hospital space she filled with playful color. Now I’ll never know. She leaves my heart shattered, yet full, knowing her impact on the world will long outlive her.
The Christmas before she died, too sick for a traditional celebration, Mary Beth was still determined to spread goodwill. She packaged goodies, recruited a friend and headed for Chicago homeless encampments to share her gifts. Tent by tent. Every occupant worthy of love.
Mary Beth Rampolla was an architect and designer. She died July 12 in Chicago. — By her sister Karen DeBonis
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The Post is publishing reader-submitted obituaries as part of a weekly feature, What We Remember.
The post An artist who expressed herself in everything she did, and other lives we lost appeared first on Washington Post.
