Jeannette Marie Piette

 Jeannette Marie Piette turns 60 on August 19, 2021.

Of course, years are just numbers, and if you would meet Ree, as the siblings and niblings calls her, or Lola, as her descendants call her (if they don’t call her Mom) or Jeannette, as her ever grateful clients call her, or Ma’am, as the doctors in her office call her, you would never guess her age. Not because she looks good (which she does) but because of her ever-youthful attitude towards life, the universe, and everything.

But I think I need to go back a little bit to help everyone understand the whole picture of Jeannette.

I remember her being born. We had to spend the night over at a friend’s house (yes, all five of her siblings!) and sleeping in a bed with at least one, maybe even two or three others. I would have been barely four years old at the time, so this must be one of my earliest memories.

And my dear sister has been at the front of my mind ever since.

Ree at about two months, held by Dan

She was certainly the darling of the family, and the baby for almost two years.

We all doted on her.

 

Ree, learning how to stand before her time

These were the days when walkers were still being used to help kids get around. And she scooted all over the house. She could not be constrained!

 

Ree being fed a caramel

She always wanted to be part of the game. It didn’t matter what was going on in the house, she always wanted to be there. And we all wanted her to be there, as well.

Ree, hamming it up

She always knew how to capture the camera

 

And talk any one of us into doing her bidding.

Ree being read to by Dan

Of course, eventually she was no longer the baby.

But she would always be the baby girl.

She and I would walk to school together when she was in Kindergarten. She still had to walk home alone (only about ½ mile, but still, she was five years old!) which she did uncomplainingly.

She was always eager to find and understand new things.

And as usual, the girls in the family are better looking than the boys. (Sorry, bro)

 

Portrait of the younger siblings

And then I have a dearth of photos. This is for a couple of reasons, one is that I went off to college, and another is that we just didn’t take that many photos back then.

The Seven Kids as adults

But from high school to college, you can start to see Ree’s true character develop. 

Jeannette became the bravest person I know.

It probably started when she went off to college. She did not pick UW – Madison, like most of the rest of us did, but UW – La Crosse, where our sister Abbie graduated.

And it was a good thing that she did. She met the (first) love of her life there – Bill Lasse. They each realized that they had a dream, and that dream did not include The Driftless Area of Wisconsin. 

Like all true hearted brave souls, they moved west, to Denver, Colorado. 

And here they started, together, from scratch.

As I said, brave. I had been living in Denver just before she moved there, but I moved back to Houston by the time she arrived. I visited Colorado for work frequently, and had the chance to see what she was doing.

The first place I saw was a boarding house on lower Colfax Avenue. Don’t think “Petticoat Junction”, think “Deadwood”. This part of the city was still very, shall we say, rough. And Ree was the manager of the place (now, completely gentrified, by the way. If she every has a chance to take her little grandbabies up to there to see where she lived, they will say, “Oooohhh!!! FANcy!”). Remember the Clint Eastwood movie Every Which Way but Loose? The bar in that movie was the Zan Z Bar, and it sort of epitomized lower Colfax at the time. The saying on the door was “It’s later than you think”.

And sadly, it was.

While Ree was taking care of the boarders, Bill was building houses. He had a good job with a custom builder, and Denver was starting to boom. He eventually started his own construction company (Brave!) and started building houses on his own.

But it turned out that Bill had a heart condition, undiagnosed from his youth, even though he played football and other sports all through high school. I would suspect that the small town of Gay’s Mills, WI did not have strict health check requirements for their high school athletes.

Before Ree and Bill got married, they decided to take care of his heart. The doctors replaced one of his valves with an artificial valve (his heart had enlarged too much to allow for a porcine valve) and they had a successful operation.  

Then they decided to get married!

It was a great party.

Wedding toast. You can see how happy everyone is. BD is even smiling, which is rare.

And the whole family loved Bill.

Since the heart had been fixed, and the business was going well, the two decided to buy a house, AND have a baby (Very, very brave!!!) 

 

And Bill fit in well with all the Piettes. Well, he was much more athletic than any of the rest of us, but we forgave him for that.

He made Jeannette very, very happy. The world was their oyster.

 

But life tests us.

And it does not stop for us.

And it makes us live through hard times.

Bill’s heart valve had a flaw, and it proved fatal.

Ree was pregnant, had a new house a mortgage, and then the worst thing that could happen, happened.

Bill's tombstone in Gay's Mills

But the strength and fearlessness of my sister pulled her through what had to be the worst days of her life.

Again, through sheer force of will, she was able to create a life for her new baby, Quinn, and herself.

 

Ree and Quinn

She moved again – this time to Houston. She had started working in Denver as an office manager for a law firm, and it turned out that like everything else she tried, she was very, very good at this.

When she arrived in Houston, it turned out that her skills as a small business office manager were in great demand! If you remember Mad Men, Ree had the skills of Joanie – the one who kept the company going. There are some very lucky lawyers and plastic surgeons in Houston who would not be in business had she not taken control of their offices and their finances.

But of course, she still took the time to see family whenever possible.

And would make sure that Quinn would connect with all his Wisconsin relatives.

 

Quinn, the Little Man

And she did develop some long term and deep relationships. One of her favorites was Rex

Ree and Rex

Though he could sometimes be a little bit of a scoundrel, with a tad of a scallywag added in, he was always fun to be around.

 One thing that you can always count on is that Jeannette will be the life of the party

What joy!

 And always up for an adventure

And she always wanted to go back to her roots. I think she would have moved to Franklin, Louisiana and work for Mr Medrick had he made her an offer.

Jeannette (Noey), Jeannette (Ree) and Mr Medrick

 But *I* was the lucky sibling who had Ree living nearby. Which meant that she was always near us for important events.

Ree and Dan

Ree and Doreen

She was there for us at our wedding

But she never minded lending a hand to any of the niblings, or even the grand niblings.

Especially as it started to grow. The addition of Roxana was a great thing for all of us, but especially for Ree to have a new daughter-in-law

Quinn and the Beautiful Roxana!

And of course, it didn’t stop there.

Lola and Renee, the Quinntessa!

And more babies! Well loved

 

Sister, I am so proud of everything you have done. You are an inspiration to me, and I know you inspire many, many others. As I said above, you are the bravest person I know. I love you.