Sue Ann Gilster

The light, laughter and constancy that was Sue Ann Gilster passed peacefully away on Sunday, March 11, 2018 in Sparta, Wisconsin. She was born December 5, 1934, to Arthur E. Teachout, Sr. and Marguerite A. Berg. Her bright personality shone out early on, despite a childhood bout of pneumonia, and nearly two years of recuperation and bedrest. With the constant care of her parents, assisted by her uncle and aunt (also her godparents), Milton and Rachel Berg, she was able to regain her health and learn how to walk again. She was born, raised and lived most of her life on the North Side, attending Franklin Elementary and Logan High School (class of 1952), finding time between imitating her teachers and playing in the marching band to hang out at Terpstra’s and the Sweet Shop with her friends. She eventually began her surgical technician training at St. Francis Hospital, instructed by the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. She worked in Surgery there from 1953 to 1963. In 1963 she started a twenty-eight year career at Lutheran Hospital, working the surgical day-shift, and then switching to the night shift in 1977, to more easily look after her mother, a stroke patient and semi-invalid, at home, as well as her teenaged daughter. In the early 1980s she transferred from Surgery to Central Services, where she worked nights until her early retirement in 1993. In 1963 Sue gave birth to her only child, Julie Ann. She and her newborn daughter moved in with her parents, in the house she had grown up in. What was supposed to be a temporary situation lasted forty years; Sue looked after her aging and infirm parents, and her parents helped to raise her daughter. In 1967 she met the man who would become the love of her life, her best friend, mentor, solid foundation, and partner in crime – Thomas “Tom” Boyle. They became engaged in 1969. Due to both of them having elderly parents to look after, neither Tom nor Sue felt it right to marry and uproot their parents or let them try to live on their own. And years later, when there was nothing stopping them from marrying, Sue and Tom had settled into a comfortable living arrangement, each in their own home, with their own routines. They decided that if it wasn’t broke it didn’t need fixing. And it didn’t. For decades they had a standing date at the Skogen’s IGA Supermarket on George Street, every Saturday morning, for coffee and shopping. Saturday nights would see them enjoying a meal out at clubs like Four Corners or The Monkey’s Roost. Despite the odd living arrangement, Sue and Tom were a strong, happy couple, and very much in love. They spent 49 years sharing one another’s lives – Taking care of each other, making each other laugh, and helping one another through the rough patches. They finally did move in together, sharing the halls of Rolling Hills Rehabilitation Center of Sparta from 2013 until the time of Sue’s death. In their younger years they – and their daughter Julie - would go deer hunting and ice fishing, as well as to auctions, county fairs, tractor-pulls and fests, all over the back roads of Wisconsin. And they raised Julie, seeing her graduate from high school, receive her bachelor’s degree from UW-L and, in 2006, marry Stephen Philip Rogers. She loved her extended family, and enjoyed family gatherings and holidays, frequently acting up as much as her nieces and nephews did, and being a thoroughly bad influence on her daughter and all the friends Julie brought home throughout the years. Sue let them make her up and style her hair at sleepovers, told them racy jokes, and watched shows with them that 12-year-olds probably shouldn’t have been watching. As a result, Julie’s friends came to the house on George Street to talk their problems over with Sue, as much as to hang out with Julie. Sue was one someone who made younger people feel safe sharing their secrets with. And she not only kept their secrets, but made them feel better about themselves. Julie was told by more than one friend that she was lucky to have Sue as a mom. Julie knew it, every single day. Sue sang in the St. Luke’s United Methodist Church choir. Sue loved to dance, and could jitterbug with her brother Artie up into their late 40’s. Sue was a passionate fan of “Gone With The Wind”, and, like her eldest brother, Ken, a student of the Civil War. She loved to read and watch programs on the subject. And Sue was an artist throughout her life, one who loved all beautiful things. In later years, she even won awards for her work, in competitions held by the nursing homes of Wisconsin as well as at the Monroe County Fair.

Sue loved to laugh, and had one of those laughs that could made the whole room crack up. She loved to share laughter. She is survived by Thomas E. Boyle, her love of fifty years; her daughter, Julie and son-in-law Steve Rogers, of Rochester, Minnesota; her nieces, Sherwood Teachout Stanish of La Crosse, WI; Marguerite Teachout (Kevin) Lafky, of Middleton, WI and Kelly (Sandy Krajewski) Teachout, of Brownsville, MN; Lori Stroud (Steve) Hanson, of Eau Claire, WI: two nephews, Arthur E. Teachout II (Janet) of St. Paul, MN and Kristofer B. Teachout, La Crosse, WI; and a sister-in-law, Dolores Bryan (Kenneth) Teachout: a cousin, James (Jill) Berg of La Crosse, WI, and many great- and great-great nieces and nephews that she took delight in. She is also survived by the loving and caring staff of Rolling Hills Rehabilitation Center, whose compassion and kindness touched my mother and her daughter over the fourteen years that she lived there. They were no less family to her, and deserve to be remembered as such. She was proceeded in death by her parents; her brothers, Kenneth F. Teachout and Arthur E. Teachout, Jr.; a nephew, Michael A. Teachout; her uncles, Milton (Rachel) Berg and Edward Berg; aunt Beulah Teachout (Orville) Smart; cousins Nancy (Berg) Rash; Mary (Berg) Schoekert; Harold (Jane) Smart. A memorial service was held Friday, March 16, at Schumacher-Kish Funeral Home, La Crosse, with Pastor M. Park Hunter of the Onalaska United Methodist Church officiating.