Madeleine Ann Throesch

Madeleine Ann (Baltz) Throesch, beloved wife of Carlton Throesch of Engelberg, Arkansas, was born to eternal life on Friday, August 8, 2025. She had recently celebrated her 86th birthday with many friends and family. She was a lifelong Catholic who devoted many hours of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament in the adoration chapel at St. Paul's Church in Pocahontas and faithfully attended mass at St. John's Church in Engelberg. Madeleine was the fourth of eight children, and she grew up in the middle of a huge and joyful extended family on Catholic Hill in Pocahontas, Arkansas. She married her high school sweetheart and spent the rest of her life being a devoted farm wife and homemaker for her husband and four children. Madeleine had a heart that yearned for beauty, and she was able to find it everywhere – in nature, poetry, books, music, and people. She sought continuously to bring beauty to any place she found herself. At an early age, Madeleine learned to sew and began a lifetime of creating beautiful things for those she loved. Her mother soon began to rely on her to do the sewing for the family, which included six daughters. She was a perfectionist, developing her skills to a level that made her a national finalist in the Singer Sewing Machine Company dressmaking contest in her senior year of high school at St. Paul's School, winning a trip to New York City and the Singer sewing machine that she used for the rest of her life. Madeleine made dresses and clothing for all her family, curtains and pillows, baby clothes and blankets. But she was most well-known for making wedding dresses. Besides her own, she crafted them for friends and family, enabling so many brides to have the dress of their dreams. Madeleine especially loved flowers. She knew the names of hundreds of varieties of roses and other types of blooming plants. She was constantly on the lookout to discover new wildflowers around the family's pastures and farmland and would search through her numerous books on the subject to identify her finds. She was known for her glorious flowerbeds and beautiful bouquets. Carl always knew the best gift he could bring her was a bouquet of wildflowers. Madeleine loved music and enjoyed playing the piano. Her children cherish the memory of afternoons listening to her play. Madeleine was truly a homemaker. She designed their family home, drawing up the plans herself. She sewed all the curtains, bedspreads, pillow covers, seat cushions, and more. She made a beautiful, comfortable home that delighted her family, and she was always ready to share her talents and help her own mother and children with their homes. Christmas was a magical time, with lavish decorations and a twelve-foot-tall Christmas tree she decorated like something out of a storybook. She was also an excellent cook, especially beloved for her potato salad, pineapple upside-down cakes, and buttermilk fudge. And, of course, beautifully decorated Christmas cookies. Although Madeleine loved creating and having beautiful things, she made sure her family knew that being beautiful on the inside was what truly mattered. Madeleine taught her children to love God and to always treat others has they would want to be treated. She was a powerful example of loving and serving, even when life was difficult, in her years of caring for her own parents and parents-in-law as they grew older. For many years, she was a caregiver for her widowed father-in-law, who lived his last nine years in their home, and also for beloved farmhand William "Bud" Bilyard when he was stricken with cancer and whom Madeleine and Carl cared for in their home until his death. Madeleine is preceded in death by her parents, Dr. Matthias Anthony and Mary Lousie Baltz, and by two sisters, Mary Therese (Horace, dec.) Davis and Mildred Margaret Kueter. She is survived by her devoted husband of 65 years, Carlton Throesch, and her children, Cara (Terrill) Needham of Atlanta, GA, Maria (Michael) Taylor and Carlton "Sonny" (Diana) Throesch, Jr., of Engelberg, and Dr. Elizabeth Throesch (Carrie) of Hartford, CT, as well as siblings Guy (Joan) Baltz, Rita (Henry, dec.) Dust, Dr. Albert (Rose) Baltz, Genie (Loyd, dec.) Harper, and Janet (Dennis, dec.) Holt, and brother-in-law Bill Kueter. She was the proud grandmother of eleven grandchildren: Emma, Reese (Laura), and Camille Needham; Olivia (Bryer) Moore; Alex and Henry Taylor; and William, Perry, Madeleine, Catarina, and Isaac Throesch; and one great-grandchild, Madeleine Jane Moore. The family would like to express our deepest thanks to her devoted caregiver, Mable Barnett, who was a wish fulfilled and a reward for Madeleine's own past labors in that field, as well as to the staff of Randolph Home, whose kindness and attention to every need we cannot praise enough. For lasting memorials, please consider donations in memory of Madeleine to Arkansas Children's Hospital. Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband, too praises her. Proverbs 31:28 Visitation will be held August 12, 2025 from 5:00 - 7:00 pm with a Rosary beginning at 7:00 pm in the McNabb Funeral Home Chapel. The funeral mass will be held August 13, 2025 at 11:00 am at St. John Catholic Church with the burial to follow in the St. John Cemetery with Father Stephen Elser officiating. To send a flower arrangement in memory of Madeleine Ann Throesch, please click here to visit our sympathy store.