Marie Flaming Rupp
Marie Flaming Rupp, 97,
social worker, homemaker and journalist, died Monday (Dec. 26, 2005) at Clear
Creek Care Center in Westminster, Colo., where she lived near her son Larry
Rupp, of Arvada, Colo., president of Navajo Manufacturing Co. She was born Nov.
6, 1908, to Aganetha Flaming and the Reverend Peter Flaming, a minister at the
Hoffnungsau Mennonite Church of Inman for 60 years. Her parents came over in
the 1874 migration from Russia. She graduated from Buhler High School and proceeded
to Bethel College, finishing in 1933.
While at Bethel College, Mrs.
Rupp chartered the International Relations Club. It is now a very prominent
organization at the college where students of various ethnic origins attend. It
was at Bethel College where she met Carl H. Rupp. However, they married some
years later in 1947 and had three children: Larry, Carla Marie Rupp, a
journalist and musician of New York City, and John Edward Rupp, who preceded
Mrs. Rupp in death at age 18 months.
Mrs. Rupp was urged by the
president of Bethel College in the 1930s to further her education at the
University of Chicago and the Graduate School of Social Work. She worked for
the Social Services Department in Chicago during the Great Depression. She
served as a senior caseworker and also as an intake worker. Her social work
career lasted 15 years, including working as county welfare director in Morton
County and as juvenile court officer and county welfare director in Liberal.
Marie was a longtime Newton
area resident and former freelance writer. She died of natural causes and was
considered to be one of the oldest polio survivors in the country. She was
active in polio support groups and wrote creative writing about her polio
experience, including poems and stories. She was at one time an active member
of the Newton Area Creative Writer's Group and also the Kansas Author's Club.
Many of her feature articles
about ordinary Kansans with interesting hobbies and accomplishments appeared in
Kansas newspapers including the Hutchinson News, Wichita Eagle and Mennonite
Weekly. She also wrote about the people in the Moundridge community for the
McPherson Sentinel and was paid by the inch.
Her hobbies including
swimming, and she was a frequent visitor to the pool at the Newton Recreation
Center.
Other survivors also include:
grandchildren, Jason and Samantha, Lani, Lari and Lana.
Services will be 11 a.m.
Monday at the West Zion Mennonite Church in Moundridge where she was a member.
Viewing and meeting with the family will be from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.
Burial will follow at the
church cemetery, and all are asked to stay for lunch at the church.
