I didn’t know Wilma until I married her niece Julie. Julie and Jessica spent summers in Michigan growing up and were just an extension of the Borchers girls. I heard stories while dating about the memorable times Julie had on the farm with Aunt Wilma running the show.
I first met Wilma at our wedding and it was apparent that she was a “take charge” and “let’s get it done” person as she made all of the last minute problems (that are always there at a wedding), just disappear.
My first visit to Spring Lake was as a married couple and I was welcomed by Wilma as just another member of the family. She introduced me to things I had never experienced before. Things like barbeque cooked all day on the stove, keeping the house shut up during the day and turning on the house fans to let the cool air in at night. And most importantly, the joys of a glass of Uncle Paul’s homemade wine at the end of the day.
Later in the 80’s she came to San Francisco with Evie for a visit. She was a baseball fan, always listening to Cubs games on her am radio in Michigan. We decided to take her to Candlestick Park for a game against Atlanta. Now the Giants were not the team they are now, so typical attendance at a game was somewhere south of 4,000 fans. It was easy to get good tickets so we sat down low, shading towards home plate on the 1st base line. Her face was filled with pure joy sitting there watching the game.
The icing on the cake was when Darrel Evans fouled one off and it bounced off the edge of a stair above us and directly into my hand. I promptly handed it to Wilma as a keepsake and she was thrilled. At the time Atlanta televised all of their games on WTBS and her grandson Nathan taped the game on the family VCR so that moment of joy was captured forever.
And then there was the time that we visited Aunt Wilma in mid-January when Patrick and Christopher were little. It snowed overnight and the next morning she got all of us out of the house to build snowmen. She showed the boys (and me) how you roll the ball in the fresh snow to build up its size. After we had the balls stacked, she disappeared into the house to come back with an assortment of empty thread spools, pipe cleaners, and other bric-a-brac to finish our “alien snowmen”. Patrick, Christopher, Julie, and I still talk about those spacemen snowmen to this day.
We saw Wilma for the last time at Christmas 2019. We visited her a couple of times during our stay and while time had taken its toll on her body, she was still the Wilma that I had known for almost 40 years. As we all shared a bottle of John’s homemade wine, you could see the glint in her eyes, the kindness, the “can do” attitude, and a little bit of mischievousness that she always displayed in her younger life.
All of us who knew Wilma were better off because of it. She had a positive impact on almost everyone that she met, and I was no exception. Someone smarter than me once said “as long as you remember those that have passed away, they really aren’t gone”. If that’s the case, Wilma is not truly gone and won’t be for a very long time. She will live in our memories for all that she brought to our lives.
