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Posts Tagged ‘MERKA FLETCHER, MERKA FLETCHER obituary, Funeralworks Obituary, Douglass Funeral Service’

PostHeaderIcon MERKA FLETCHER of SHUTESBURY, MASS, October 27, 1945 – May 18, 2017

SHUTESBURY – Merka Fletcher (Mary Uris Oser), 71, of Cooleyville Road in Shutesbury, died at home, surrounded by her loving family, on Thursday, May 18, 2017. She was born October 27, 1945, the daughter of Kathleen Johnson Oser and Auren Uris, and raised in Clinton, New York.

After graduating from Clinton High School, Merka earned her bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1967. She spent a semester in college teaching at the Lugulu Girls High School in Kenya. For her first job after college, she served as road manager for her young musician friend, Janis Ian, accompanying her on a national tour. Always a gifted communicator, Merka returned to teaching, initially as the dance teacher at the Cambridge School of Weston. She later studied creative movement and worked for the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health as an arts specialist providing coaching and guidance to teachers of young children with intellectual and physical disabilities. In her mid-20s Merka pursued a master’s degree at the College of Education at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. As a graduate student, she supervised college students completing their student teaching at the University Day School, and after completing her master’s degree she was hired as a UMass faculty member to supervise student teachers. While at UMass, Merka met her husband, Donald Fletcher, at a class she taught for employees of Belchertown State School.

In their first of many big projects as a married couple, Merka and Donald built a timber frame replica of an 18th century cape on a wooded 5-acre plot in Shutesbury, Massachusetts. Preparing for their house raising in 1974, Merka hand-planed huge beams while pregnant with their first child. In 1975 they moved in and they have lived there ever since. For seventeen years Merka nurtured and raised her four children while running a small sheep farm that at various times also included pigs, chickens, rabbits, ducks, horses, and goats. The house and the land have been Merka and Donald’s shared project for the past 45 years. In the house, they painted rooms in charming colors and decorated it with country antiques, sea glass, hooked rugs, and small farm animal figurines. They also added two wings, including the beloved sunroom where they spent countless mornings reading and drinking coffee. On the land, they cleared fields for sheep to graze and for children to play, restored and built stone walls, and planted gardens that grew ever more beautiful each year.

When the youngest of their four children started kindergarten, Merka began teaching kindergarten at Swift River School in New Salem, and later was the head teacher for children with autism in the Athol-Royalston elementary school system. She taught for fifteen years before retiring in 2007. As a teacher, Merka was powerfully sensitive to the needs of every child, especially those who were quiet or shy. She put kids at ease, followed their lead, drew them out, and nurtured their creativity. She was a welcome addition to her schools among the other teachers and staff, as well. She had a tremendous ability, rooted in warmth and kindness, to build and facilitate positive relationships. The district superintendent put it best: “She would make a school into a community.” Supporting and building people up was second nature to Merka as a teacher, a wife, a parent, and a friend.

The same qualities that made her a great teacher also made her an extraordinary grandmother, adored by each of her grandkids. They enjoyed sitting on the floor with her building with blocks or fitting together a puzzle. She loved few things in life as much as reading books to her ten grandchildren, individually or in big or small groups, usually snuggled together on a couch.

Merka was a gentle person who lived in tune with the natural world and the creatures in it. Her kids remember clearly her cobweb removal instructions to leave untouched any active spider webs – she never wanted to harm another creature’s home. She had a joyful and insightful appreciation of animals, flowers, trees, the weather, and the heavens. Whenever her friends or her kids wondered what an especially bright star in the sky was, they just asked Merka, she always knew. She delighted in countless details of the natural world, the entrancing nighttime call of a loon, the fleeting magic of a shooting star, or the perfect softness of the air as spring becomes summer.

Merka will be dearly missed by her husband of 45 years, Donald; her four children and their partners, Ethan Fletcher and Heloisa Griggs, Addie (Fletcher) Dublin and Max Dublin, Lena Fletcher and Brad Timm, and Will Fletcher and Melissa (Friedman) Fletcher; and her ten grandchildren (ages 14 years to 1 month), Lukas, Jasper, Zeben, Tucker, Leo, Wylie, Finn, Gabriel, Isabella, and Jackson. Her sisters Vicki and Tina Uris and their partners, John and Thomas, will also miss her immensely. Always a nurturer of relationships, Merka was loved and will be missed by a large number of friends and relatives who treasured her, including the Browns, her second family from the Browns’ Farm in Nobleboro, Maine; the Evans family in Clinton, New York; the “Fogeys”;

her Cooleyville Monday night dinner community; and her wonderful Tuesday group of former Swift River teachers (current quilters and rug-hookers), among many other dear friends whom she cherished. In addition to her parents and their beloved later life partners, Jake Oser and Doris Reichbart, Merka is predeceased by her younger brother, David Oser.

Merka will live on in all that her friends and family learned from her. Those who knew her aim to live more gently, patiently, and joyfully than they otherwise would. They may never equal her grace, but in their efforts they convey her best qualities to their friends and children. In this process, Merka’s life has created a ripple of gentleness and warmth flowing, person to person, into the future. That is her legacy, and a fitting one.

A celebration of Merka’s life for family and friends will be held in the field at Donald and Merka’s home at 16 Cornwell Road, Shutesbury from 1:00 – 5:00 p.m. on Saturday, June 10, 2017. If you plan to attend, please let the Fletchers know by sending a short RSVP email to celebrate.merka@gmail.com. You will receive a reply email with more details about the event.

Whether or not you plan to attend the celebration, if you have a memory, story, photo, thought, or anything else you’d like to share about Merka, the Fletchers would love to hear it. Please email it to celebrate.merka@gmail.com. The family will share a collection of these stories in some form at or after the June 10th celebration. More information, including posts that Donald wrote during her final weeks and dozens of photos of Merka throughout her life, can be found at https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/merkafletcher.

Donations in Merka’s memory can be made to Partners in Health or to UNICEF, two organizations whose missions reflect some of her deepest values.

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