Pearl Chaput

Pearl Chaput, 90, of Langdon, ND passed away Wednesday, December 28, 2011 at Cavalier County Memorial Hospital in Langdon, ND.

Pearl A. Howell was born March 14, 1921 to Clarence and Flora (Martineau) Howell. She was born and raised in the Leroy, ND area. Pearl married Mauris Chaput on November 15, 1943 in Leroy. They moved to Langdon where they farmed until Mauris’s death in 1981. They had lived north of Langdon until they built their new home just south of Langdon where Pearl still resided.

Pearl was a great gardener and spent a lot of time in her garden and yard. She loved flowers and plants which you could tell by looking inside her home. Pearl enjoyed entertaining and was a great cook. Most of all- she loved playing cards with her friends and grandchildren. Even when she was a resident at Maple Manor recovering from a recent health issue, her friends would come and play cards with her.

Pearl is survived by two daughters: Doris (Leslie) Hoffarth of Langdon and Diane Dunmire of Cooper City, FL; son-in-law: Wayne Kroetsch of Grand Forks, ND; grandchildren: David Hoffarth (Lisa Feil), Cory Hoffarth (Katie Restad), Kim (Matt) Davidson, Danny Kroetsch, Amber (Joe) Reese, Megan Dunmire, Melissa Dunmire; great-grandchildren: Sean Hoffarth, Jessica Hoffarth, Evan Davidson, Hayley Reese, Mariah Dunmire; sister: Ann Marie (Mark) Collins of Cavalier, ND; sisters-in-law: Sally (Dick) Otto of Osnabrock, ND and Judy Howell of Seattle, WA and brother-in-law: Stanley Karl of Leroy, ND. She is also survived by her beloved cat, Boots.

Pearl was preceded in death by her husband: Mauris; daughter: Mary Kroetsch; sister: Rita Karl; and brother: Robert “Buddy” Howell.

Visitation will take place from 3 to 5 pm Friday, December 30, 2011 at the Brooks Funeral Home of Langdon, ND followed by a prayer service at 7:30 pm at the St. Alphonsus Catholic Church of Langdon, ND with Nolan Spenst officiating.

FUNERAL SERVICES will be held Saturday, December 31, 2011 at the St. Alphonsus Catholic Church of Langdon, ND at 1:30pm with Fr. William McDermott officiating.

Interment: Calvary Cemetery, Langdon, ND

The following was spoken by Pearl's grandson, Cory Hoffarth, at Pearl's service:

Hello everyone, I would like to thank you all for coming. Just as grandma would anytime you visited. Pearl A. Howell was born March 14th 1921 to Clearance and Flora (Martineau) Howell. She was happily married to Mauris Chaput on November 15th 1943 in Leroy and farmed until his passing in 1981.

My grandma was a great woman. She was many things to many people. She was a mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, godmother, sister, and a friend of many. She always loved company and treasured her time with everyone. Any time we would be at her house for the holidays we would be greeted at the door by music echoing from the den, be It an old country western tune or just holiday music. She had a very large stereo system which I thought it was strange for grandma to have such a huge stereo. But she loved music, and entertaining. It was a habit that I know anyone who ever visited grandma would recognize. She would prepare mountains and mountains of food even if it was just her and one more. You would eat and eat and barely make a dent in all the food she had set around you. Then she would say, at least to me, “poor little man aren’t you feeling good, you barely ate anything”. You never went away hungry from grandma’s house.

Grandma loved gardening. She always had a big garden and loved planting it and watching it grow. For a few years she would even have a big potato patch behind the trees. It was always a treat for her in the fall when the whole family would come home to harvest the potatoes. She just enjoyed and appreciated things most would take for granted. She loved watching her plants and flowers grow and she loved watching her birds and enjoyed feeding them.

Grandma loved to play games. She knew how to play and was good at every kind of game, I think ever known, and she loved teaching someone a new game. We played everything from croquet to canasta. There were a few that we had to change the rules to, such as croquet, (I don’t know if anyone knows how to play, but the way we played, you hit a ball with a mallet, through hoops and try to hit several posts in the least amount of strokes ,and if you hit anyone else’s ball on your turn you got to hit it away. ) Well my older cousin Danny would purposely hit your ball and then whack it all the way into the ditch from the yard so you would take 50 strokes to get it back into the game area. Even for years after we quit playing, she would talk about that and laugh. She often talked about her bonko parties and pinochle parties and cherished everyone that came and played. She would always talk about someone that was so lucky but she was usually pretty lucky herself. She loved winning but hated to have to beat someone, she would make it subtle but she would often bend the rules a little so she wouldn’t hurt someone’s feelings. Which was usually mine because she always beat me. She taught me how to play canasta and me and her and my aunt Mary played many games together. Until one afternoon Mary got all four jokers and laughed and laughed (if you knew Mary that was a trademark) I refused to play with her anymore after that. If only I could turn back time. Her newest game was the dice game Farkle and myself and my girlfriend Katie were fortunate enough to get to play the last games of the night with her on Sunday and Monday. She only wanted to play one but after the first one I would say one more won’t hurt. Thank goodness I did. But it wasn’t the games that she enjoyed, it was the time spent with loved ones that she truly treasured. It was always a fun time when you went to grandma’s.

She loved her cat Puss in boots or just Boots for short. For those of you that don’t know the story. A friend of my girlfriend Katie’s passed something on the street one night in Grand Forks. She turned around to find a few baby kittens huddling in the cold winter night around their mom that was hit by a car. She picked up the kittens and gave one to Katie because she couldn’t keep them all. We inevitably couldn’t have the kitten in our apartment because it meant eviction if the landlord found out. As much as it hurt us to find Boots a home we thought of grandma. I thought she could use the companionship and would help the days go by a little faster with someone else around the house to take care of. She said she would take him and history was made. She would say to me sometimes that she didn’t know what to do with him when he was being bad but then when I would offer to take him now that I’m living back in town she would follow with “poor boots he’s my cat”. If you knew grandma “poor” was a prefix she used with just about everything and everyone. Even though sometimes it felt like she was being overbearing, she genuinely cared about everyone’s well-being and only wanted to see us live happy and healthy.

She was a woman that did not take much for granted. She really did enjoy every moment spent with everyone. I would often sit and listen to her tell stories of years past. Of good times had, and not so good times. She talked about growing up in Leroy and working hard and all of the relatives she knew and cared for. I can’t imagine how much fun she must be having now, seeing loved ones and catching up. Probably winning at a game of pinochle. It is frustrating to the ones she left behind. She overcame so much in her life. She was worked hard in her youth, she was kicked by a horse at a young age, she was burned by an oil lamp, in her later years she had a knee redone, she had a tumor removed from her neck, and a football sized tumor removed from her stomach, she had broken her wrist, and last summer she had broken her leg. She worked so hard so she wouldn’t have to be in the nursing home and be a burden on anyone. It was a miracle at 90 to be in the nursing home with a broken leg and to go home again. After all these things, grandma always pulled through and God had good reason for this, she had many lives that she had yet to touch. But alas it didn’t matter about us this time, he did what was right for Grandma. God finally called her home on Wednesday the 28th of December at 11:16 am at the Cavalier County Memorial Hospital.

In the comfort of those many loved ones around her, including myself and my mom, father Mcdermott, and the wonderful emergency room staff that day. She will be missed by everyone whose lives she ever touched. She was one person that I always looked up to and never regretted being around. She was truly an inspiration to me and many others and even though the pain of losing her will very slowly start to fade the memories that we have of her will last forever, and even though this is a very sad day, there is something that we can take away from all of this. To cherish time spent with the ones you love, like grandma did, because we won’t have them forever.