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Note: N9852 . I, Jim Stevens, author of this database, remember Nellie, my grandmother well. As a child, we lived only about half a mile from my grandparents home at 1109 Cleveland Avenue. I used to walk over there and visit often. Grandma always had a dish of candy available and would always let me drink a bottle of Coca-Cola. I enjoyed listening to LP records with Grandma on her phonograph. Some of my fondest boyhood memories were of time spent at Grandpa & Grandma's cottage at Long Lake, near Three Rivers, Michigan. As an adult, I enjoyed talking with Grandma about "the old days". . Years after Grandpa died, Grandma finally decided to move in with her son, Chuck, in Granger. After a time, Grandma decided that she did not want to be a burden and moved to the apartment on Travers Circle. . I shall never forget how I saw the providence of God at work when Grandma died. My visits with grandma were not very frequent during her last years. She was in good health and her death was quite sudden and unexpected. At that time, I was a member of a church that held a Sunday evening service. I almost always attended. The Sunday one week before she died, for no good reason, I decided not to attend evening service, but instead took a poinsettia, my Christmas gift, to Grandma at her apartment. I ended up staying for quite a while and we had one of the best visits we had had in a long time. I never remotely suspected that that would be the last time I would speak with her. No one will ever convince me that I was not responding a divine whisper in my ear when I decided to visit that evening! Following is Nellie's obituary from the 21 Dec 1987 edition of the "South Bend Tribune": . Nellie J. Goepfrich, 81, of 728 Travers Circle, Mishawaka, died at 2:47 p.m. Sunday in Memorial Hospital. Mrs. Goepfrich was born Apr. 25, 1906, in Yarmouth, Maine, and had lived in South Bend most of her life. On Jan. 25, 1927, in South Bend, she married Rudolph Goepfrich. He died July 4, 1974. She is survived by three daughters, Joan Stevens and Margaret Smudzinski [should be Zmudzinski], both of South Bend, and Helen Collins of Mishawaka; a son, Charles J., of Granger; 21 grandchildren; 14 great-grandchildren; three sisters, Viola Tomaska of Dayton, Ohio, Gertrude Goepfrich of Venice, Fla., and Printha Radecki of Kalamazoo [Michigan]. . Services will be at noon Wednesdayin St. Anthony de Padua Catholic Church. Entombment will be in Riverview Mausoleum. Friends may call from 3 to 8 p.m. Tuesday in Hickey Funeral Home, 3516 E. Jefferson Blvd., where a parish rosary will be said at 3 p.m. Mrs. Goepfrich was a member of American Turners.
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