My mother Marie died Tuesday, at age 88, after a prolonged series of medical events that surely would have killed anyone less stubborn a hell of a lot sooner. Born at the height of the Depression in Pennsylvania, to Polish immigrants, she grew up picking the coal off the trains tracks to keep the family warm in the winter, studied by a single electrical bulb at night and as Salutatorian of her high school, was one of the few to leave that area on a scholarship to Mansfield Teachers College.
She first visited, and then moved to Park City in the early 1980s, when property values were cheap, and was soon a millionaire on paper. Then, just as quickly, about a decade later, she was back to where she had started, alone (divorced) and "poor as a church mouse" as she would say.
Like many who came here to visit and then stayed, Marie was a "character." She was afraid of nothing and no one. In retrospect, "spitfire" would perhaps be a kind appellation for mom as she was not necessarily the easiest person to reason with if she loved and trusted you, and heaven help you if she did not. She once spent five days in jail for contempt, at age 67, after "disagreeing" with a local judge, and then called from jail in high spirits to tell us the food wasn’t so bad and that she was helping "the prostitutes." She couldn’t have been more thrilled than to have been sent to jail.
Surviving on Social Security checks of under $1,000 a month, mom was able to stay only because of the low-income apartments provided by the then-nascent Mountainlands Housing run by Bob Wells, about whom so many laudable things have been written since his passing. The fact is — mom would not have survived as a tenant with anyone else at the helm. Bob had plenty of other challenging things to deal with, but he always made time for her — and plenty of it, too.
If Marie was a unique tenant, her many needs as a medical patient provided a host of other challenges, all of which were met by Dr. Robert Barnett, who provided 35 years of continuous medical care for her. Mom had a host of medical issues, both real and imagined, that often had her calling Dr. Barnett at odd hours or showing up without an appointment. Dr. Barnett disregarded whether she could pay, and took her nature in stride. His uncanny degree of compassion and professionalism recalled the days when doctors practiced holistic medicine and the patient was more than the sum of their discrete parts. Even after she had suffered a stroke and was bedridden, when he was no longer treating her, he visited her Salt Lake City nursing facility just to be by her side and calm her.
Marie was active in the local AA chapter and with her 45-year chip, liked to help people to help themselves through the processes of addiction and recovery. Her host of AA friends, along with the two Bobs, were integral to Marie being able to stay in her beloved little town, including the garbage man who came up to her porch weekly to get her trash when she was unable to carry it to the curb.
So thanks to everyone, especially the two Bobs, who made her continued life in Park City possible. You can’t trademark that kind of character. It belongs to the town and the people who share that kind of love.
Marie Rosenbloom is survived by her two sons, David and Daniel, and her three beloved grandchildren, Alison, Elizabeth, and Daniel, all of whom seem to have inherited the "character" gene.