Midge Zischke

1932 - 2023

Midge Zischke
December 9, 1932 - March 13, 2023
Alice Marian Oliver Zischke, known by all as "Midge," died of complications of dementia on March 13, after 90 wonderful years. She was predeceased by her husband of 63 years, Peter Harrington Zischke in 2016. She is survived by her son Michael, his wife Nadine Sponamore and their daughters Julie and Jessica; son Kurt and his wife Victoria ("Tori") Adams Zischke and their daughter Alexandra ("Scout"); daughter Marian Baldauf and her husband Hans Baldauf and their son Fritz and daughter Liesl; and daughter Karen Zischke and her husband Bob Hackett and their daughters Alice and Hannah and son William.
Midge came from a long line of Olivers in the East Bay, starting with her great-grandfather William Letts Oliver, a mining engineer who arrived in California from Chile in the 1870s. She was born in one of the "Pill Hill" hospitals in Oakland, and her parents were William Letts Oliver II and Alice Quayle Oliver. Midge was the oldest of three children, and her younger brothers William Letts Oliver III and Thomas Edwin Oliver predeceased her. She attended Anna Head School and briefly attended Westlake School for Girls in Los Angeles during World War II. She graduated from Piedmont High School, and attended the University of California – Berkeley for three years, where she was a member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. Midge was a third generation Cal alumna, and a lifelong Cal athletics fan and Bear Backer.
When Midge was a junior at Piedmont, she met Pete Zischke, who was a freshman at Dartmouth College and whose parents had just moved to California from the Chicago area. Her first blind date was arranged by Joan Hagey, who later married Pete's brother Jim. Midge attended one of Dartmouth's Winter Carnival weekends with Pete, and primarily remembered never being fed anything. Their dates grew into a life-long love affair, and Pete and Midge were married in 1953 in Oakland.
Her husband Pete served with the Army in Japan, and bride Midge came to stay with him in Yokohama. The Army would ship his car over but not his wife, so Midge's parents funded her transportation. Their son Michael was born in Yokohama, and this apparently triggered spousal travel coverage. Pete, Midge and Mike returned from Japan on a military transport ship in 1955, and they settled in Orinda, where they lived during the rest of their marriage.
In Orinda, Midge and Pete had three more children: Kurt, Marian and Karen. Midge was active in a wide variety of community and educational organizations, starting with the Garden Club of Orinda and the Sleepy Hollow Tennis Club, where she played tennis with friends for many years. She served on and led the Orinda School Board in the late 1970s when it had to face the property tax reductions from Proposition 13, and later started the Educational Foundation of Orinda to provide additional funding for Orinda schools.
She also served on the boards of the UC Berkeley Foundation, the Lawrence Hall of Science, and the Center for Living Skills. When the California Shakespeare Festival moved from Berkeley to Orinda, she became an active supporter and started the Will's Weeders group to help maintain the theater grounds. In 1986, Midge was named Orinda Citizen of the Year.
In addition to all her community work, Midge ran a large and generous home, including stays by exchange students from Chile and Holland, Tucker Foundation interns from Dartmouth, assistant coaches from Cal, a variety of visiting actors who were performing at Cal Shakes, not to mention various golden retrievers, cats, parakeets, hamsters, a squirrel, chickens, and pigs. This expanded human and animal family provided great enrichment to both her children and grandchildren.
Midge was a cheerful and dedicated woman who made many friends in the communities in which she lived and served. She and Pete had a magical life together, at home in Orinda, at Tahoe and later at Silver Lake, and at Stinson Beach. Midge spent many childhood summers at the Oliver summer home at Lake Tahoe, and she learned to waterski behind a beautiful Gar Wood boat that generated a very large wake. She had a lifelong love of the mountains, with stays at the Triangle X Ranch in Wyoming, family camping trips to Markleeville and Idaho, and time with family and friends at Silver Lake. Midge was particularly adept at identifying and painting Sierra wildflowers. In her later years, she and Pete had a special fondness for Switzerland, where they took more than 15 hiking trips. She also enjoyed a visit to her many Letts family cousins in Peru in 2010. She will be missed and fondly remembered by her large circle of family and friends, particularly her eight grandchildren for whom Midge was a continuing source of inspiration, laughter and silliness.
The family wishes to particularly thank Armando Villaverde for the kind and loving care he provided to Midge in her final years, and thank you also to Armando's wife Coney and Hospice East Bay.
A memorial service is being planned for June 25th at Cal Shakes; for information please contact midgezischke@gmail.com. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to the UC Berkeley Foundation (www.ucberkeleyfoundation.org), the California Shakespeare Festival (www.calshakes.org), Orinda Network for Education (formerly the Educational Foundation of Orinda, www.oneorinda.org), or the Alzheimer's Association of America (www.alz.org/norcal).