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After a long decline with Alzheimer’s disease, Mary Louise Forst left this earth on April 7, to go home to her Savior, Jesus Christ.
Born in Chicago, she was raised during the Great Depression. Her family lost their business and struggled financially, so along with her parents and sister, they moved in with her two uncles. Mary Lou remembered her childhood with amazing detail. Looking back, she was in awe of the sacrifice her family made to keep her busy with dance and sewing classes. From toddler age, her best friend was her neighbor, Margie, who was a friend for over 90 years as they traveled cross country to visit each other often.
She also grew up next to Jack, the boy who would become the love of her life. They knew each other from a very young age playing games like Hide and Seek. After 8th grade, she recalls noticing Jack in a different way and soon they became girlfriend and boyfriend. During their high school years, they enjoyed going to the beach, soda fountains, movies, and to stage shows at the Chicago Theater where they saw Frank Sinatra rise to fame as well as her favorite, Bing Crosby.
Mary Lou went to Visitation Catholic High School where she grew to love the Catholic Faith. She had to work at the school library to pay for her tuition. She loved telling stories of how she was chosen to be a helper companion to the nuns. The nuns were not allowed to travel on their own and loved having Mary Lou along because she was so familiar traveling around the city on the bus system.
Mary Lou kept busy her senior year when Jack was drafted into WWII. She was a very bright student who graduated 2nd in her class, had perfect HS attendance, and was president of NHS, Math, and Latin Clubs all while continuing to grow as a dancer. She received a scholarship to college but chose not to attend because traveling costs would be too burdensome on her family.
Mary Lou and Jack wrote love letters every day while he was in the service. In 1949, the two were married and 10 months later their first of five children was born. Jack’s work moved the family of seven to Missouri, Kansas, and back to the Chicago area. Mary Lou loved her five kids and made life so enjoyable. She proudly was always at the kids’ activities. She had to be frugal yet yearly managed a family summer vacation to Stone Lake. Eventually they moved to Arizona where she and Jack fell in love with the desert.
As her children grew and married, she loved their spouses and was so excited when grandchildren came along always cheering them on at their sporting events and attending special events no matter if they lived in or out of town. She was a helper, so whenever a family member moved, she was organizing kitchens, hanging drapes, and taking down and putting up wallpaper.
Raising five children, there was little time for Mary Lou to work out of the home. But when all her children were grown, she went to work for GTE as an accounting clerk and enjoyed every minute. In her retirement years, Mary Lou and Jack moved to Sun City West where they loved traveling, playing bridge, bowling, and playing golf. She was even blessed to have shot a “hole in one”.
Mary Lou was devout in her faith and loved serving as a Eucharistic Minister in numerous churches. Her family remembers her as a person who loved Christ deeply and was kind and generous to others. She did, however, have a vice… ice cream…with Hershey’s Syrup. Her family jokingly referred to her as a “Chocaholic”.
The love between her and her family was evident when year after year everyone wanted to come home for a weeklong Christmas celebration full of love, laughter and Forst games. A favorite Christmas memory was when she taught the entire family how to make her famous apple pie. She also spent years writing a detailed 300-page book entitled, “Treasured Memories”, which she gifted to her family one Christmas. Those memories will live on and be treasured forever.
Her family hurts that she has left this earth but are comforted knowing she is in the arms of her Heavenly Father and reunited with her husband, daughter, son, and other loved ones who have gone before her. Mary Lou had a sweet shyness about her with a beautiful soul and will be greatly missed by her three living children, twelve grandchildren and seventeen great-grandchildren.
Her family will forever be grateful for the incredible love and care shown to Mary Lou at Sunset View Manor by Maria, her caregivers, as well as Hospice of the West.
In lieu of flowers, the family kindly asks that you contribute to the Alzheimer’s Association in Mary Lou’s name.
To send flowers to the family or plant a tree in memory of Mary Louise Forst, please visit our floral store.