SHERBORN: Florence J. (Jensen) Ramsley, age 94, died early Monday morning, August 25, 2014, at the Mary Ann Morse Healthcare Center in Natick. She was the devoted wife of the late Alvin O. Ramsley for 52 years.
Born, raised and educated in Brooklyn, New York, she was the daughter of the late Walter and Anna (Schweikert) Jensen. Flo received her Baccalaureate from Houghton College and continued her education earning an RN at Columbia Presbyterian School of Nursing.
Flo and Al wed in 1949 and resided in Ashland prior to settling in Sherborn in 1959. Flo was employed at Framingham Union Hospital, often working nights while her sons were young. She also worked several years as a school nurse with the Dover Sherborn School District. A spiritual and hospitable lady, Flo welcomed all who entered her home with warmth and grace. She had a wonderful way of honoring others’ achievements and life events with a handwritten note and enjoyed bible study with friends. A loving wife, mother, and grandmother, Flo had a long and happy relationship with the members of the Pilgrim Church.
She is survived by her sons, Walter Ramsley and his wife Gail of Tucson, AZ, and Kenneth Ramsley and his wife Susan of Ashland; and three grandsons, Eric, Jake, and Chris Ramsley. Florence was also predeceased by her firstborn son, Alvin, Jr., and her cherished granddaughter, Jenny.
Her funeral service will be held in the Pilgrim Church UCC Congregational, 25 South Main Street (Rte 27), Sherborn, on Sunday, August 31st at 1:00PM. Burial will follow at Pine Hill Cemetery.
In lieu of flowers, Flo’s family ask that donations be made in her memory to the charity of one’s choice.
Flo's sons, Walter and Kenneth, have created a photo tribute to Flo which can be viewed at http://youtu.be/ym5L0HTA-IE and have written a more personal and in depth look at her life. The following is what they have shared:
Flo went off to college in 1938. She’d graduated from Erasmus Hall in Brooklyn that spring. The economy finally was improving. Her father was a mid-level executive at J.P. Morgan, at the main office on Wall Street. Things had been pretty good in the Roaring Twenties. Rufus and Flo’s mother, Anna, had friends over all the time. They threw parties. They even sidestepped the alcohol prohibition law on occasion. Things changed after the Crash. For a while they became so bad the family moved in with Flo’s uncle and his crew. Flo was a kid. She had a great time with that, making the best out of what was still to her a pretty good situation. She never had any brothers or sisters of her own. Now, in the depths of the Depression, she had female cousins to live with. It was fun.
Flo took Houghton College by storm. She always downplayed what she accomplished there and how much she did. But it’s pretty clear from her stories that she was a go-getter and got a lot of things done, out there in upstate New York. Flo joined a bunch of clubs, and ultimately ran quite a few of them. She was class secretary. She always claimed the schoolwork was a big challenge, that she wasn’t much of a student. But she made the Dean’s List. And while her report card wasn’t computerized, like it would be today, an eyeball comparison of hers and her eventual husband’s looked like she had him beat, at least everywhere besides math, chemistry and physics.
Flo persuaded Rufus to cough up the $500 it took to attend Houghton each year. Her father still worked at the bank, and this time everyone’s salary didn’t get wiped out when the stock market nosedived in 1937. J.P. Morgan had learned its lesson. Rufus was a tough cookie, despite his outward manner. He could talk and recount stories and tell jokes until the cows came home. So could Anna, for that manner. So it was a battle when Flo announced at age 15 that she’d had enough of the Catholic Church. That she had become a Protestant. It wasn’t exactly tooth and nail. Rufus and Anna weren’t devout. It was their heritage, though.
They came around. In fact, Rufus and Anna became Protestants themselves before long. And Flo went off to Houghton. Where she flowered into a smart, vivacious, hard working young woman. Today she might have joined a highflying employer; or maybe gone to medical school. In those days her choices were more limited. Plus, there was a war going on.
Flo joined the Salvation Army after college. She moved back to New York, this time Manhattan. As World War Two intensified she worked at the Army Men’s Social Service Center, caring for the wounded. She liked the work and decided to learn more about it. Once the war started winding down Flo was accepted by the Columbia University School of Nursing. She earned a masters degree. Upon graduating she joined Presbyterian Hospital on the Upper West Side. That still is part of Columbia University today. In 1948 she took a day off and went downtown to a Houghton College reunion.
And the rest is history.
Flo and Al were married in October 1949. “We had a wonderful time at the reunion,” which probably is quite an understatement. Al was finishing up a masters degree of his own at Columbia, in physical chemistry. Obviously, he was a good student. To earn some dough before the wedding Al took a job at General Electric up in Pittsfield, Mass. That was long distance relationship in those days. Phone calls weren’t cheap. And cars had a tendency to break down just when you needed them. Flo moved to Pittsfield after the wedding. That didn’t last too long, though. Flo was a devoted wife and everything. But it’s hard to take a New York girl and plop her down in Pittsfield.
General Electric took Al’s request under advisement. His department offered to transfer him to Walla Walla, Washington, to join a new operation out there. The newlyweds both thought that sounded great. An adventure. And a raise. But the human resource departments were as good back then as they are today. It lost the paperwork. Nothing happened. Somebody else filled the position. And Al decided private industry wasn’t for him after all. He took a job with the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps in Philadelphia. Flo had a son, Wally, while they lived there for two years. Then they moved to Massachusetts after the Natick Labs opened.
She had another son, Kenny, in 1955. The family moved to Sherborn in 1959. And once they started paying that mortgage, Flo returned to work as a nurse over at Framingham Union Hospital. In the early 1970s she worked briefly as a real estate broker, too, hoping to cash in on a boom that was going on. Rufus and Flo’s uncles all had a good nose for the stock market, and investments in general. She inherited that. One thing Flo always wanted was to buy waterfront property along Jensen Beach in Florida. That was her maiden name (lucky). And the beach was close to where her inlaws were retired (practical). All of us really regret that Flo never persuaded Al to do that one. (We’d be rich!)
Flo became the Dover-Sherborn high school nurse in the 1960s. She taught Sunday school at Pilgrim Church. She was the Sunday school superintendant for several years. She ran a pair of Bible study groups. She became a church deacon. She tagged along with Al to the Lions Club – and later was named Lion of the Year. She joined the American Legion – and became its Memorial Day parade marshal. She volunteered at school. Flo was 100% involved in her children’s lives and activities. She was a great mom. Whenever you needed anything, she was there.
Flo always criticized the feminist movement during its early days, but that was more a complaint about the hippie element and the drugs and the sex than anything else. As much as she loved her boys there’s no doubt she always wanted a girl, too. Flo would have been proud, watching that kid take advantage of the opportunities she never had.
Once Wally and Kenny graduated from college, and the bills subsided, Flo retired from nursing. Al was at the peak of his game. The Labs kept trying to promote him to management. But Al wouldn’t hear of it. He liked it in the lab. The Army promoted him anyway, placing him in charge of a gigantic science project – “Your mission, Mr. Ramsley, should you choose to accept it, is to create a new uniform the Russians can’t see.”
So off they went to Germany.
Al was a genius when it came to camouflage. Or at least he knew how to use the laboratory equipment better than anyone else. Nobody really knew. They did know he got results. Coming out of the Vietnam debacle the Army was changing everything. One thing it wanted was a better uniform for the European theater. Al spent two years developing the technology in Natick. In 1978 he went to Munich and led a NATO development team. Flo might have been interested in what her husband was cooking up. But he never said boo, to her or anyone else. It was secret. So she had a fabulous time touring Munich and the surrounding area while Al devised new ways to fool the Russians. Which he did. The Army still is using that design. And the R&D methods he established were used to engineer the next uniform style, made famous by “Operation Desert Storm.”
They visited Norway. They toured other parts of Europe, too, when Al had some time off. Those trips were nothing, though, compared to the trips Flo took while she was still single. She earned good money as a nurse in New York. Flo toured the entire United States one time, by bus. She traveled all over. Flo also knew a good junket when she saw it. In 1948 she attended the International Congress of Nurses in Stockholm. Once that was over she jumped on another bus and toured Sweden, Norway, England, Scotland, Holland, Belgium, France, and Germany. Those buses were better than the American ones. Neither had bathrooms but the rest stops were closer. Everybody complains about air travel today. Flo went back and forth to Europe on a troop ship, an ocean liner that hadn’t yet been converted back for civilian use. Metal bunk beds.
Al retired in 1986. His health declined after that. Flo remained busy in the church and a variety of other activities. She spent lots of time with her grandchildren, who lived nearby. She helped nobody knows how many people. Anybody who had a problem, Flo took that seriously and did everything she could to fix it. If that didn’t do it, she’d pray. Flo had a powerful ability to pray. It was a natural talent. Most of us pray and nothing much happens. When Flo prayed, she got results. She talked in tongues, also. Flo could turn that on and off. “Here. I’ll show you.” The next thing you know it’s the Queen of Babylon. Talking a mile a minute in a language nobody ever heard before.
Flo was a religious lady. Nobody deserves to go to heaven more than she does. But she never criticized anyone who didn’t share her beliefs. She understood people. She loved people.
We love her.
We will miss her.
The following letter was written by Flo in 1994:
October 29, 1994
Dear Mrs. Dempsey and Class Members,
In looking back over my childhood days in the 1920’s and early 1930’s it is amazing to see how many things have changed.
For instance, we got our first car, a Cleveland, when I was eight years old. It was so homely, like a big metal box on wheels. It had a running board on each side to make it easier to get into because the floor was so high. The ‘trunk” was a metal box fastened to the back of the car. Suitcases were placed on top of it and tied down. There was not heat, air conditioning, or radio, and the driver had to work the windshield wipers by hand. When it was cold the passengers used heavy “lap robes” to keep warm; the poor operator nearly froze. The highways were two lanes and like today, were always under some kind of construction!
How would you like to drive to Florida in July in that car? Well, we did, for three weeks and the engine kept overheating and the tires had flats very often. There were no fancy motels but on the road we stayed at “tourist cabins” for $3 to $5 per night. They were very small and sparsely furnished. In cities we stayed in “tourist homes”, the early version of today’s “bed & breakfast”.
Most people in our neighborhood kept their cars in the garage all week and used them only on the weekends and holidays for visiting and trips. Very few women drove, and some of the men used the cars for work, especially those who had to carry a lot of supplies. Other times we all used subways or trolley cars. A trolley car got its name from a rod with a pulley that extended overhead to a wire providing electricity to the electric motor. The car ran on the tracks down the middle of the street. The motorman frequently had to get out and put the trolley back on the wire or it wouldn’t move. The conductor took our fare (which was 5 cents one way) and we could go for miles and miles. The same fare applied to the subway and between it and the trolley cars we could get almost any place in the city (Brooklyn and New York City).
There are special memories I have of city living. I’ll never forget the horses and wagons that would come by. There was the “Rag Man” who would call out as he came along the streets, “Rags, Rags, Have you got any rags today?” If my mother and the other neighbors had any, they’d rush out with them. They probably got paid a few cents for the bundle, but I never found out what he did with them!
Early in the morning I’d hear the clippity-clop of horses’ hooves as the milkman took the empty 1 quart glass bottles and left the full ones on the porches. The bottles had cardboard caps that fit inside the rim. The cream would rise to the top and in very cold weather it would freeze and push the cap up 2 inches or so above the rim. The cream was rich, not what we get today. It could be whipped up very quickly when poured off the top of the bottle.
The “Ice Man” in his horse and wagon delivered ice to our homes. He’d cut a piece to fit the icebox and lift it up with huge ice tongs and place it on a burlap bag on his shoulders. It would cost about 50 cents and would last for a week in cold weather. He came more often in the summer. We didn’t have a real electric refrigerator until I was thirteen.
Because these iceboxes were small, refrigeration was limited. That meant frequent trips to the store. No supermarkets then! We went to each store for the different thinks we needed: butcher shop, fish market, fruit and vegetable store, candy store, stationery store, dairy store, bakery, drug store, etc. Ground beef cost 20 cents a pound, bread was 8 cents a loaf, and milk cost 8 to 11 cents for a quart (no gallons or half-gallons). Penny candy was just that, and sometimes we’d get a few pieces for a penny! A sheet of bubble gum came in a package of baseball cards. I remember that my friends and I were often asked by our mothers to run to the store for something after school. More often than not we’d ask the clerk for 20 cents worth of something rather than ask for a specific amount (such as a half a pound.) That way the clerk could do the figuring for us – no calculators around then! Most times that was all the money we had that day to spend. There were no toy stores. Expensive toys like trains or doll carriages were bought for birthdays or Christmas at Department Stores.
The school I went to was a typical public grammar school of the 1920’s. It was red brick, the basement was street level and there were three floors above that with about 24 classrooms. There were not elevators. The Boys’ and Girls’ rooms were in the basement. Thus we asked the teacher, “May I please go to the basement?” when we had to go to the bathroom.
The basement also served as our gymnasium though about all we did was called “exercises” like aerobics of today. The school yard was concrete and we had no equipment of any kind – we played our own games before school (usually ball). The only playgrounds we had were in the park and that was some distance away.
Boys and girls were separated outside and when the bell rang to enter school we each lined up separately and marched silently into school. Before the class started for the day, the teacher would day “Good Morning Class”, and we would respond with “Good Morning Miss Dove” (or whatever her name was). Following that, we stood and said “The Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag”.
Every Wednesday was “Assembly Day”. The girls were required to wear a navy wool pleated skirt, white middy blouse with a navy blue scarf (like a navy uniform). The boys had to wear long pants, white shirt and a blue tie. The Principal read a Psalm from the Old Testament of the BIBLE and said a brief prayer and then we pledged to the flag and sang “America”. Following that there was a special program. One time a Christmas Play was given in which I had a lead role, so I’ve never forgotten that! It was all because of Miss Dove, but that is another story.
We had to walk to school and that was about five city blocks for me, regardless of the weather. There were no school busses. We even had to go home for lunch and heaven help us if we were late getting back. The teacher would scold us in front of the class and we’d get a TARDY mark on our report card.
As I write this to you, you are probably excited about Halloween and the costumes you’ll be wearing to go “Trick or Treating”. We celebrated the day mostly by going to parties at our friend’s homes. We wore costumes and played scary games and had lots of fun. However, on Thanksgiving Day morning, we dressed in raggedy clothes, carried paper bags and went from house to house asking, “Anything for Thanksgiving?” Our bags would be filled mostly with oranges and apples, but we were delighted to receive some money and a little candy.
As our Thanksgiving Day approaches I wish you all a happy day and a year full of wonderful days to remember.
With love,
Grandma Ramsley