In Honor of My Godmother
As we say goodbye and her family continues to grow, may she never be forgotten
My mother’s younger sister, who was also my godmother, passed away during the COVID lockdown after having been in the hospital for 8 months due to sepsis and its complications. Last weekend, the family was finally able to get together for a memorial. This is an extension of her original obituary.
Evelyn (Maertz) Rake
February 4, 1959-April 8, 2020
Evelyn Ruth Rake, age 61 and a longtime Warsaw resident, passed away in Fort Wayne’s Lutheran Hospital on April 8, 2020.
Born in Bronx, New York on February 4, 1959, Evelyn Maertz was the daughter of Edward and Alice (Rownes) Maertz. She was one of five sisters and was raised in New York, graduating from Bronx High School of Science in 1977. She later went on to earn an associate’s degree and worked primarily in accounting and as an office manager for several Warsaw-area companies.
Evelyn was a fun-loving, easy-going person. She rarely knew a stranger and was a jokester at heart. As the co-director of the Kosciusko County Historical Society, Evelyn often lead paranormal tours through the Old Jail. She was a founding member of a local paranormal group and loved TV shows like Ghost Hunters and anything Sci Fi. She also enjoyed trying her luck at the casino and spending time with her sons.
Evelyn is survived by her two sons: Edward Rake and Daniel Rake of Warsaw and Lafayette, respectively. She is also survived by her sister, Marianne Prater and by many nieces and nephews. Those who preceded her in passing include her parents and three sisters: Ellen Short, Joan Radigan and Carol Ann Tozzi.
It was Evelyn’s request to be cremated.
On June 15, 2024, her ashes were spread at a private property on Lake George in New York, where her family spent summers at the campground. Her first camping trip was at 5 months old and, after her father passed and the family summers changed, she revisited the lake with family, including her sister Marianne, several times. Eleven family members from three generations celebrated her life and said goodbye at sunset at her favorite place in the world.
She was laid to rest in the way she had always wanted.
I remember Aunt Ev picking me up on Saturday mornings to take me to the local gas station that had an arcade game in the back (like all good service stations in the 1980s!). She’d turn over a bucket so I could reach the controls, give me a handful of quarters, and I’d play Donkey Kong until my little hands got tired. She gave me iced tea after I got stitches in my upper lip when I was 5 - I had slipped on wet grass while playing in the sprinkler and fell face first into the gears of a reclining lawn chair. I remember fighting with the band-aid as I sipped. Whenever I wasn’t happy or had a trantrum, I’d exclaim, “I want Aunt Eb!” I once swallowed a nickel in Kmart when she took me shopping. She sat me by the pay phone in the entryway to call my mom and ask what to do. It was a common story at family dinners well into adulthood.
She made sloppy joes for birthday parties, fried up burgers with onions in cast iron on Grandma’s stove, put together a Thanksgiving spread to be rivaled, spurred on my dalliance with arts&crafts, and had a menagerie of unusual pets over the years - birds, ferrets, sugar gliders, a tarantula, lizards, and various large snakes (I didn’t care for those). She also had her beloved pit bull Bentley, who passed a couple of years before she did. He was comically afraid of rabbits.
We found out this weekend that her first grandchild will be welcomed into the world this fall. And recently a daughter-in-law and stepkids were added into the family. She’d be proud of how her family has grown.
Here’s to Evelyn never being forgotten.