Florence Rutgers Tisdale

Florence Rutgers Tisdale of Wye Mills, MD, formerly of Arlington, VA, died on Thursday, December 19, 2013, at Memorial Hospital in Easton, MD. She was 97. Florence was born in Irvington, NJ, the youngest of the three children of Paul and Edith Carow Rutgers, and spent her growing up years in Irvington and Madison, NJ. She attended Bucknell University. After attending Bucknell, she worked for Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Company in Newark. Fascinated by flight, she met her future husband, Etsel Olin Tisdale (Tex) of Tampa, FL, at an air show in NJ in 1941. The handsome and dashing young Army Air Corps Master Sergeant in uniform stole her heart, and they were married on December 20, 1941. They were married for 55 years. Tex died in 1996. After the war, Tex’s work took the family, which now included three children, throughout the US, living in New Jersey, Florida, California, Arizona, Idaho, Colorado, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland. The family traveled extensively throughout Europe, and lived for more than a year in Lahore, West Pakistan. Throughout her travels, Florence remained active in the local church congregation. Her volunteer activities with the churches included working with the foreign missionary physicians, singing in the choir, and working as the church secretary. She enjoyed knitting, crocheting, swimming, decorating and renovating (She enjoyed knocking out walls the most!), and playing the organ. She was always surrounded by pets, and had more dogs, cats, horses, and ponies than anyone can remember. She also enjoyed genealogy, maintaining connections with her father’s extended family in Solingen-Merscheid, near Düsseldorf, Germany, as well as her mother’s extended Carow family in New York and Connecticut. The main focus throughout her lifetime was her family. She is survived by her son, Paul Tisdale and his fiancée’ Pam Fox, of Washington D.C,; daughter Carol Bilek and her husband Mike, of Wye Mills, MD; and daughter Mary Tisdale and her husband Steve Newman of Arlington, VA. She is ‘grandma’ to seven grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren. She is also survived by numerous nieces, nephews, and cousins. She was plucky, from flying in open cockpit aircraft during long lunch breaks, to cross country road trips in 1930’s era convertibles, to camels in the 1960’s to Winnebago trips from Alaska to Florida in the 1970’s ‘80’s and ’90's, and finally, despite her macular degeneration, electric scooters into the ‘00’s. Ever stylish and well turned out, she enjoyed people and adventure her whole life. A memorial service will be held on Saturday, December 21, 2013, beginning at noon, at the Old Wye Parish Episcopal Church in Wye Mills, followed by interment at the Old Wye cemetery. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to further the research on Macular Degeneration at the Wilmer Eye Institute of the Johns Hopkins Hospital system, 600 North Wolfe Street, Baltimore, Maryland, 21287-9015, www.hopkinsmedicine.org/wilmer or Episcopal Relief and Development, an international charity, at www.episcopalrelief.org, or your favorite animal shelter.

Florence Rutgers Tisdale

August 15, 1916 - December 19, 2013