A year ago, I was fortunate to spend Mother’s Day with my mother in Burlington, Iowa, at the facility where she was living at the time. I remember we had a delicious dinner of fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, vegetables and dessert.
This year, she’s celebrating Mother’s Day with her own mother in heaven, along with two sisters and four brothers. In advance of her funeral, I wrote up this bio of my mother for Father Marty Goetz. To my delight, he used some of the anecdotes in his homily at her funeral at our home parish of St. Paul’s.
Here ‘s what I wrote, along with some photos, for your enjoyment:
Barbara Louden Sutter grew up on a farm near Terre Haute, Illinois, the second oldest of eight children.
When her older sister, Elizabeth, started school in the one-room schoolhouse, she would come home and teach Barbara everything she had learned. When Barbara started school, she immediately skipped a grade!
Barbara’s introduction to Christianity began at a young age, when her father took her and her siblings every week to Sunday school at a Christian church.
After graduating from Terre Haute High School, where she was class president, Barbara moved to Burlington to attend the Burlington College of Commerce, following in the footsteps of Elizabeth, who had done the same.
When Barbara became engaged to Joe Sutter, in the early 1950s, she converted to Catholicism. They were married on Sept. 27, 1952, at St. John Catholic Church, and then joined St. Paul Catholic Church due to its proximity of their home on Franklin Street and later on North Seventh.
Barbara was instrumental in raising their three children, Tracey, Drew, and Jane in the Catholic faith. When the kids were very young, she taught them to kneel in front of their beds, fold their hands, and say their nightly prayers.
The family attended Mass every Sunday at 10 a.m. at St. Paul’s. Then they would return home and Barbara would make a big breakfast or dinner.
She and Joe enrolled them in St. Paul Grade School, and Barbara made sure they left the house early to get to Mass every day prior to the start of classes. The family observed all the holy days. Having to abstain from meat on Fridays during Lent wasn’t really a hardship, as Barbara used to make delicious dinners of fried oysters or shrimp, French fries and onion rings. This was long before anyone worried about cholesterol and saturated fats!
Because Joe was busy running Sutter Drug Store, Barbara was in charge of the household and instilled strong values in the children. She had many sayings that she repeated as a way to teach her kids, such as:
“If you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all.” She would not tolerate hearing gossip from the kids about their schoolmates.
“If you don’t like someone, just ignore them.”
One of Jane’s favorites is: “Jane, the boys wouldn’t tease you if they didn’t like you.”
Barbara also passed on her love of good books to her kids, a trait she picked up from her own parents. She took the kids to the public library frequently until they were old enough to go there on their own.
Barbara volunteered at the church and the school, including Notre Dame when the kids went there for high school. Well into her 80s, Barbara was washing and ironing the altar cloths every week for St. Paul Church.
Barbara wasn’t one to talk a lot about her faith; her actions and demeanor reflected it instead, as she volunteered at the Welcome Center at the Port of Burlington Building and did service projects as a member of TTT. Recently, when daughter Jane was visiting, she found in Barbara’s home the prayer missals that she and Joe used back in the ‘50s and ‘60s, along with their rosaries and other religious medals.
Barbara and Joe set a good example for their children of what a loving marriage looked like. They enjoyed spending time together, especially golfing. Joe was an avid golfer when he met Barbara, and she said that he told her, “You need to learn to play golf, otherwise you are going to be sitting home a lot!” She did, and for many years, they played couples golf every Friday night and Sunday afternoon at the Burlington Golf Club. She also played in the Thursday morning women’s league. Their children all took golf lessons, too, so they could play as a family.
When Barbara was 60 years old, she decided she’d had enough of the frustration of golf, and she turned to tennis. She enjoyed playing ladies doubles until age 80, including playing with her young granddaughter, Megan, when she and Joe spent winters in Florida.
Barbara was fiercely independent. After Joe passed in March 2013, she lived on her own until November 2017, when her hip broke. Although her body and mind slowly gave out, on her good days, she enjoyed living at Bickford Assisted Living, listening to the musical acts, making crafts, and playing trivia.
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