Waltham – Blanche M. Norris, formerly of Springfield, Wilbraham, and Southwick, passed away on August 12, 2023 at the Meadow Green Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Waltham.
She was a member of the Wilbraham United Church for over 40 years, and was a member of the choir. She was previously a member of the Foster Memorial Church in Sixteen Acres, where she also sang in the choir.
Blanche was born on March 19, 1924, in Detroit Michigan, to Leonard and Gertrude (Welwood) Rawn, and grew up in Grafton, Massachusetts. She graduated from Grafton High School, and completed one year in the nursing program at Clark University.
She was predeceased by her husband of 59 years, Forrest H. Norris Jr., in 2004, who served as a Deacon at the Wilbraham United Church, and their youngest son Scott, in 1999. She is survived by her daughter Susan Norris, her son Brian Norris and daughter-in-law Catherine Rule, her son Jeffrey Norris and daughter-in-law Angie Norris, her grandson Ben Norris, and her nieces Kathleen Letellier, Lauren Letellier, Mary Duffy and Vicki Nielsen.
While maintaining a residence in Wilbraham, Blanche and Forrest spent two years in Kobe, Japan, where Forrest worked for the Honny Chemical Company, and they subsequently spent seven years in Izmir, Turkey, at the Özel Amerikan Kız Koleji, a preparatory school for girls founded by the United Church of Christ, where Forrest taught science and Blanche served as librarian.
Blanche was devoted to her family, and always said her main and best occupation was being a wife and mother. She worked part-time at the Forbes & Wallace Department Store after her children were grown. “If you shopped at the Eastfield Mall in the late Sixties/early Seventies, she was the smiling face at the F.&W. glove and handbag counter – part salesperson, part traffic cop, part information bureau. With a fingertip and countertop drum roll, I’m sure she is getting everything in order up there in no time at all. Miss you every minute, and the pies!! Pecan, pumpkin, apple (garnished only with cheddar cheese), and above all, the rhubarb! — which she grew herself.”
“Children reflect their mothers attributes; love, kindness, and compassion. Blanche gifted her children with these wonderful gifts. She herself exemplified all of them.”
“Even as her body and mind failed her, she retained her feistiness and her wacky sense of humor.”
Blanche loved baking, gardening and bowling, playing bridge and cribbage, doing double-crostic crossword puzzles, and singing in the church choir and Gilbert & Sullivan choruses for community theatre productions. The family spent many summers on Little Squam Lake in New Hampshire, at Blanche’s sister’s camp, playing a fiercely-competitive (if not combative) form of a collective solitaire card game called Squeak, where players simultaneously would be trying to out-maneuver everyone else to lay down a card on a communal pile of cards, vigorously protesting an illegal move by someone else while making the same move themselves, and laughing as hard as possible.
Blanche requested no visiting hours. Her ashes will be interred alongside Forrest and Scott in the Memorial Garden at the Wilbraham United Church on Monday, August 21, 2023, at 11:00 a.m.
Wilbraham Funeral Home is in charge of the arrangements.
She requested that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to The Shriners Hospital for Children in Springfield, Mass: https://donate.lovetotherescue.org/give/119312/#!/donation/checkout?utm_source=shrinerschildrens&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=donateheader&utm_campaign=shrinerschildrens&c_src=shrinerschildrens&c_src2=header.
Please join us for refreshments after the ceremony in the Church Fellowship Hall.
