Norma-Jean Papritz

Norma-Jean Marie Jorgensen Papritz left this mortal existence on January 6, 2017 at about 2:50pm. Family members were gathered by her side giving her loving words of encouragement. Debbie, Dale, Della, Kiralyn and Andrew were in the hospital room with her at the last. She had a sudden illness and hospitalization on New Year’s day brought on by sepsis infection that caused a small heart attack and pneumonia. Cause of death was of complications from pneumonia and long term diabetes. She is survived by children (and spouses) Deborah (Scott) Bryce, Dale, Della Lembke and Dana (Tammy) Papritz, sister Sandra (Frank) Cummins, sister-in-law Betty Jorgensen, ex-husband Gordon Papritz, half brothers and sister and 12 grandchildren. She was preceded in death by her brother Ornal Jorgensen just 5 days before; and son-in-law Richard Lembke a year and a half earlier.
Norma-Jean was born in Calgary, Alberta Canada on May 22, 1933 to Archibald and Kathleen Jorgensen. Her childhood memories include spending summers on her Uncle Gordon’s farm in Airdrie, Alberta, Canada. She bailed hay, helped with farm chores, and learned to drive when she was 13 on the farm. She had many happy memories there. She remembers her Dad, Archibald playing in a band. Band members would come to the house to practice. Archibald played piano and she remembered watching him play when her eyes were just the level of the keyboard. Her Mother Kathleen was an RN—a pioneering woman in the field of medicine as the first female civil service nurse in the province of Alberta. Norma-Jean was very proud of that. Her parents divorced during her childhood. After a time, as a teen ager she butt heads with her Mom and wanted to live with her Dad, so she moved to Seattle at age 16 where she lived with her grandmother, Nan. She married June 5, 1955 to a young handsome Navy man, Gordon Papritz. She was a beauty with quite a figure (24” waist). After living on the Navy base in San Diego for a short time, they made their home in 1957 in Port Townsend, Washington where their four children had a memorable childhood on the shores of the Puget Sound in a two story brick home on three acres overlooking the saltwater and with a view of the mountains. Norma-Jean was active in the Methodist Church there and served teaching Sunday school and directing the choir and singing solos. She sang solos for many church and community events, weddings, and funerals. Much later, she became active in Toast Mistress and won trophies and awards for numerous speech contests in Washington and later in Southern California. She dreamed of being a traveling speaker for women’s issues. She moved to Thousand Oaks, California in 1973 with three of her children a few years after her divorce in 1969. There she had a mini farm in her back yard, with chickens, ducks, geese, a turkey, rabbits, plus a garden all to supplement the family meals. Son, Dana was especially good at helping out with the little farm. Norma-Jean enjoyed looking at the latest fashions in magazines and in the patterns she chose for sewing. Those who knew her well, knows she liked to look nice and always kept her fingernails self manicured and painted. She was a mother who liked to teach her children. She was easy to talk to and she talked about everything. She shared her interests with her children and taught them how to do them. For example she taught Debbie how to do canning—she canned pears and apples from the fruit trees in the yard. She also taught Debbie and Della how to sew and make their own clothes. Dale fondly remembers baking cookies with Mom and sampling the cookie dough as they went. She loved to play card games and other games. Her children and grandchildren have many memories playing games with her like Rummy, Scrabble, Boggle, and Phase 10. She loved to have fun. In her later years she still did word search puzzles. While getting dental work done at USC, she spent hours every week in the nearby LDS family history library while she waited for her dental appointment. She immersed herself in searching information about her ancestors. She enjoyed using her imagination and her investigative reasoning to put together the stories of the family members represented by the information she uncovered. She also loved to travel and spoke fondly of her trip to Spain, Portugal and Jamaica with her husband, Gordon, in 1968. Later in her life (1991) her son, Dale, gave her a trip to Europe with daughter Della. Dale met them there to see the sights together. On this trip she thrilled at the blessing to stay with Great Aunt Connie in the cottage built by Norma-Jean’s great, great, great grandfather. She also went to the nearby local church cemetery in Chinnor, Oxfordshire, England to see some family plots and take photos and gather that family history information. She was often spontaneous in her desire to have fun. In 1982 at the drop of a hat she took a road trip from southern California to southern Utah to pick up Dana after his multi-state bicycle ride. They had a wonderful exploration of Bryce canyon together and saw other sites along with way.
Norma-Jean worked in various fields; teaching music at the junior high school in Chimacum, Washington, caring for the others as a nurse’s assistant at the hospital in Port Townsend, Washington, then caring for the elderly in a nursing home in Thousand Oak, California, and secretarial/data entry positions for many different office settings as a temp in Southern California. She tried her hand selling Amway, Vivian Woodard cosmetics, life insurance, and even was an in-home care giver before she retired from working. She enjoyed many different arts and crafts such as painting, macramé, croqueting, knitting, decoupage, making jewelry and creating floral wreaths. She also enjoyed writing, gardening, cooking, singing, dancing, going to parties and acting. She obtained her AA in journalism at Moorpark College, California in 1981. There she wrote articles for the college newspaper, enjoyed student outings to the latest big musical in Los Angeles, and enjoyed her association with young college people and mentally stimulating professors. She loved community theater and performed in Port Townsend and in Thousand Oaks including Harvey, Mikado, Fiddler on the Roof, Oklahoma, A Salesman Rings Twice, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir etc. She was politically active and participated in several demonstrations for ERA, even Mormons for ERA including traveling to Chicago to join a march for ERA. In her later years she volunteered at voting booths. She was passionate about writing and kept journals, wrote poems and always dreamed her heart’s desire of publishing a book one day. She was well read over many popular and obscure topics and loved using her latest found knowledge to impress in conversation. She had a colorful personality, was jovial, care-free, and loved to try to shock others by things she said for her own amusement. Anyone who has met her and had a conversation with her usually remembered her and couldn’t help commenting, “I like her. She’s different.”
She was an explorer of religion. She attended her Mother’s non denominational tent meetings as a teen ager, and at one of these was touched so deeply she wanted to “walk down the sawdust path” to the front to pray and be saved. After her Aunt Bea’s encouragement, she did. She either joined or fellowshipped with such a range of religious or philosophic thought, including Methodist, Baptist, Mormon, self hypnosis, Rosicrucian, Buddhism, Judaism, Wicca, and perhaps more. In 1998 she returned to membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and was an extraordinarily active temple attendee where she thrilled to perform saving ordinances for her ancestors. She frequently felt her ancestors close to her while researching family genealogy and while doing the temple work for them. She was a prolific genealogist and compiled many large notebooks on her family and ancestors. This is one of her greatest contributions and legacies. Indeed she has blessed countless generations through her acceptance of the gospel of Jesus Christ, offering it to her children and the great genealogy and temple work she accomplished. Her other life accomplishment—the one of which she was always most proud—was the good job she did at “raising four beautiful, successful children.”
During her marriage she was very good at hosting parties with her husband who was very active and prominent in the community. She was a creative and excellent cook. She liked trying new things. Once she cooked a Jewish sader dinner for her family. At Christmas time she always supplied the family with a variety of Christmas cookies: thumbprints, Russian tea cakes, shortbread, spice cookies, etc.; always with the thought in her mind of “Two dozen for the family, one dozen for me.” She loved her sweets. Some of her favorites were lemon curd, Roger’s Golden Syrup from Canada, and Almond Roca butter crunch toffee candy.
Her funeral was Friday, January 13, 2016 at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at 3600 Norconia Drive, Norco, California at 11:00 with the viewing at 10:15. Her internment was next to her Mother in the family plot at the City of Airdrie Cemetery in Airdrie, Alberta, Canada on Feb 15, 2017.