Blanche A Vanis

I met Blanche when we were just out of high school in Cleveland, Ohio where we both grew up and had mutual friends. Blanche went to work at Potter and Mellon designing church objects such as chalices, and also jewelry. She was very talented. My career was in the U.S. foreign service where I served in 7 foreign countries, one of them Spain. Blanche was a world traveler herself and during my time in Madrid, she visited me in Spain at the same time as did my sister and brother-in-law, in the early 1980s, and we four traveled around the country by car. When I retired in 1995 I moved to Florida, but as my sister was living in Ohio, we tried on each of my visits there to visit Blanche. We managed to meet with her in her Shaker Heights apartment and took her to lunch one time not too many years ago. Blanche had been suffering from cancer, and soon after she moved to the facility where she was cared for the rest of her life. I only heard of her passing a week ago through a mutual friend who lives in Kentucky. We had tried hard to keep up with her whereabouts, sometimes without success. We will miss Blanche, who lived a rich and full life with good humor and grace. I understand she was the last member of her family and the youngest.