Marita Jo Maxey

Marita Maxey (Rita) passed away on December 31, 2022, age 87. Born in Oklahoma, Maxey spent early childhood traveling to 25 California towns, then attended 4 first-grade classes in: Stockton, Oakland, Ripon and Sacramento. She also made annual trips to her maternal grandparents' Iowa farm and to the Maxey Drugstore in Riverton, Iowa. At age 6, when WWII began, her father left his U.S.D.A. Great Depression job, became active in the US Army and the family slowed down. But the speed with which people entered and exited her young life made good-byes ever difficult.

She played happily with Japanese-American neighbor kids all summer in 1942 in Fruitridge, CA. until they were forced away to detention camp, an event with memories which haunted her for a lifetime.

There was second grade in Fruitridge, third grade in a 3-room school in rural Anderson, Iowa; fourth and fifth grades in two schools in Edmonton, Canada; sixth grade in San Antonio; seventh in Renton, WA; eighth, nineth and high school in two Seattle schools with one semester of high school in Washington, D.C.

She took a gap year with her family in Tokyo, where she fell in love with a U.S.A.F. airman from New Jersey and, together, they discovered Kabuki Theatre, Emperor Hiro Hito on his balcony on New Year's Day, 1954, and entertainer Louis Armstrong there for the troops. They kept in touch for a year by U.S. Mail after both returned Statewide to opposite coasts for college. She very rarely spoke of him, but when she did, she said that a part of her never stopped loving him. He was a happy man, she said, with innate respect for women.

In Tokyo, Maxey had volunteered weekly for the American Red Cross; attended (Jesuit) Sophia University part-time and learned Japanese flower-arranging, Sogetsu school.

She graduated in 1957 with a (3-year) diploma from St. Vincent's College of Nursing, Los Angeles. She graduated in 1959 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing at Loyola University, Chicago; and later in 1981, earned a Master in Guidance and Counseling degree at Roosevelt University, Chicago. She was licensed in both California and Illinois as an R.N.; Illinois-certified as a School Nurse; and Illinois-certified as a K thru 9 teacher.

Maxey practiced nursing at 5 Chicago venues: Passavant Hospital - Northwestern; Infant Welfare Society of Chicago; Visiting Nurse Association of Chicago ("VNA"); Children's Home and Aid Society of Illinois; and (20 years) at Chicago Public Schools. She was astonished by nurses' very low wages in the early years and was instrumental in getting increased pay for the 35-nurse staff at Infant Welfare, 1967, with legal help from Illinois Nurses' Association.

Having had fleeting childhood friendships in varied communities, Maxey's interest in her patients' cultures came naturally. Patients were sometimes responsive on her home visits with hot coffee on cold Chicago mornings along with treats such as eggs and Mexican sausage wrapped in a tortilla.

Maxey was a 30-year part-time volunteer docent at Chicago's Field Museum education department in anthropology exhibits and, there, had a positive encounter with Pawnee Indian elders whose nation had once occupied Nebraska land where Maxey's paternal great uncle later had a cattle ranch. Maxey traveled in Europe; many parts of Mexico and Britain; the Caribbean where she scuba-dived; and most U.S.A. states.

Maxey enjoyed a year, at the age 66, as a volunteer teaching U.S. citizenship to Asian immigrants at Chicago's Southeast Asia Center until the onset of increased severe hearing loss, tinnitus and hyperacusis, abruptly ended it. This was a hard blow. She continued once weekly at the fairly quiet Pawnee Lodge at the Field Museum but quit at age 77. Her later years were increasingly isolated and challenged by illness. She was a voracious reader.

Maxey was preceded in death by her parents, Howard Maxey D.V.M and Edna Maxey, and survived by her younger sister Carol (Richard) Karls in Wisconsin, 2 nephews and a niece. Cremated remains were scattered as she requested. Any memorial gift is suggested to benefit the American Indian College Fund or the United Negro College Fund.