Re: Hazel I. Prunty Thiesen
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In reply to:
Hazel I. Prunty Thiesen
john small 6/02/06
Dear John.
The reply link on the geneology site is so slow I'll do this, although it's a pity not to have it recorded on the Prunty listings as there is only this one about Hazel that includes any of that Prunty clan, immense as it is. Donald Prunty, Hazel's nephew, son of their youngest brother Donald, is listed, a professional listing detailing his legal credits and academic vita. Also Marge Prunty's horse ranch (just down the river from the Prunty ranch where Hazel grew up as a child) and some postings from Margie's granddaughters (who run the ranch) are online, but that's about all.
And I can tell you almost anything about Hazel. We were close for years. I'm even using her as a character is a piece of fiction I'm writing currently (which put me on the Prunty site) and I'm the midst of research, so it's all very close in my memory about now.
I'd like the copy of Theissen marriage certificate, although I would have been at the wedding and remember it. My youngest sister Esther babysat for Hazel and Joe when they lived in Racine, really until Hazel left, I believe.
Hazel left the ranch in her early teens and came back to live with my mother, her oldest sister. After school, she had a sales job that included a lot of travel, and loved it, and it was during this time that she met Joe. After they divorced, she went back to Nevada, where the bulk of her siblings lived with their families. She had four siblings in Las Vegas and went there and found a job and met Carl Horn, whom she married, and they moved to New Orleans. They had two children, who were very young when Carl suddenly and unexpectedly died, of a heart attack I believe, and so she came back to Las Vegas to be with her sister Leta, and work there to raise her two young children. The two Theissen children had grown and Mary was in college by this time and Joe was working with his Prunty uncles who were in construction in Las Vegas. Mary had studied to enter the ministry and married a young man she met in college, and he did become a minister. After not much time in Las Vegas, Hazel moved back to the family ranch in northeastern Nevada to live with her oldest brother, Bob, who took in Hazel and the two children, and they grew up with Bob and Hazel on the ranch, wintering outside Boise in Idaho, as is usual for people from that very high corner of the state, where winter roads close early and it's pretty much impossible to get in or out of the high country ranches except occasionally by plane. By the time the Horn children had finished high school in Idaho, they both settled there, young Leta in Boise and Carl still runs the farm Bob Prunty wintered at near Idaho Falls. Hazel stayed with Bob until he died and then she settled in Boise near her daughter Leta. Hazel sold real estate, which she loved doing, until she became incapacitated by chemotherapy. She's been gone close to fifteen years now.
So. More than you probably wanted to know. She remained a happy, funny lady to the end. She was very close to her children and they to her, a very good mother. I still miss gossiping and giggling with her. She was little more than ten years older than I was, and we knew all the same people! so we always had tons to talk about and she was such fun. A pity she's gone, but she did have a happy life, left four children who adored her, and now has three grandchildren that I know of, although perhaps young Carl (Cody) has some I haven't heard of. Mary has two children, so there are two Theissen grandchildren.
You said you were related to the Pruntys collaterally. Do you mean by Hazel's marriage? I see you on a couple other postings on the geneology site and it seemed that you had other Prunty interests, which is odd if your Hazel connection was that Joe was your mother's brother. Was Joe related to the Pruntys somehow before he met Hazel? I know Hazel's sister Pauline did marry a ninth cousin, a Phipps who was related to their mother Minnie Phipps. I never heard that Hazel had married a distant relative too.
Minnie Marie Mitchell Hayes