Huron-Macomb County MI Archives Obituaries.....Horton, Kay Ann (Haske) July 6, 2011 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/mi/mifiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Norma novick fox2157@aol.com March 2, 2020, 9:40 am Cedar Key Beacon, Florida August 4, 2011 Kay Ann (Haske) Horton February 28, 1954 - July 6, 2011 Kay Ann Haske-Horton, of Cedar Key, Florida in spirit, died quietly Wednesday July 6 2011, “at home” in St. Clair Shores, Michigan, of pancreatic cancer. With her were her husband Hugh, her sister Joy Hellmann, and her friend, nurse Gayle Mitchell. Kay Ann was born February 28, 1954, in St. Clair, Michigan, to Edmund Vitold Wojciechowski and Mildred Eleanor Lance. Kay’s brother, Gordon, was born in 1942 but died in 1964. Her sister, Johanna Marie, was born in 1943. The family name was changed to Haske before Kay was born. Edmund worked in the Detroit meat industry as a butcher, truck driver, and administrator. Before Millie married Edmund, Millie’s brother — also named Edmund — married Millie’s future husband’s sister, Charlotte. Kay’s father was an usher at the wedding of Edmund and Charlotte. Family members say Kay’s father announced he’d marry next, and named the maid of honor, 16-year-old Mildred, as his wife to be. In the early years the families twice shared dwellings; all the children enjoyed their expanded family and extra parents. Kay went to kindergarten and first grade at Everett Elementary in Detroit, then second through fourth grades at Saints Peter and Paul. Gordon Haske died tragically in 1964, but the two families’ closeness couldn’t assuage Millie’s grief, and her family moved to Royal Oak. Millie volunteered in the nursery of a hospital, and developed her talent for crafts. She helped her family by selling candles she’d made in her basement. Kay finished grades five through eight at Shrine of the Little Flower. She graduated from Bishop Borgess High School in Redford in 1972. She attended the Shapero-Sinai School of Practical Nursing in 1973, her father passing away before she graduated in 1974. She worked as a licensed practical nurse in Detroit, marrying Steven Rossmoore in 1977. They moved to Washington State and she worked at a small hospital in Aberdeen. Daughter Jennifer Iris Rossmoore was born in that hospital in 1979. Kay returned to work there in 1980. She always marveled at the powerful natural forces of the Pacific Northwest coast and the contrasts with Michigan. Of her dad, she spoke of fishing trips in small boats, baiting hooks, sometimes being wet and cold, but never fearful. Her love of the water and the outdoors followed. She took piano lessons and sang in Saints Peter and Paul’s choir and Shrine of the Little Flower’s. But, her singing gifts—-a fine ear for pitch, and a richly timbred alto voice languished, other than coaxing song from her Siamese cat, Tizzi. Erica Beth Rossmoore was born in Grosse Pointe Michigan in 1983. In 1987, Kay graduated Magna Cum Laude from Macomb Community College, becoming a registered nurse. She worked the next twenty-three years in the hospital she bore Erica, the last two thirds of which in the twelve hour midnight shift, the last six years in intensive care. Kay and Hugh married in 1994, living from 1996 to 2010 in the home they built on the Clinton River in Michigan. In the year and a half Millie was with them, she took to Tizzi. Until her death in 1999, Millie smiled at Tizzi’s answering murmurs next to her. Kay Ann was the bow paddler of Hugh’s life. She made possible his involvement with small boats powered by oars, paddles, and sails. Their friend Barbara O’Hair wrote, “My enduring image of Kay is from a perfect day on the Detroit River, serene and graceful in her kayak, surrounded by light and rippling water. You couldn’t help but watch her: She was so graceful and she radiated such obvious, openhearted pleasure in the morning, in the movement of the river, and the company of friends. It was Kay as she always was, naturally and unaffectedly beautiful, like the water and the sunlight and the sky, and it made you a happier person just to be part of her world.” Hugh wrote in 2003, “It’s your laughter as much as anything why I love you,... .” An idea common to her extended family, and old and new friends, was she incited happiness. Older relatives remember her quick but kind wit, and, as a little girl, her beautiful “golden halo” of hair. “Humble grace,” are Gayle’s words for Kay. Tizzi, eighteen, and her adored dog, Sammy, five, miss her. St Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals and nature-ecology, was her saint. Like her father-in-law, Hal, who died forty days before her, she gave to the Humane Society and World Wildlife Fund. Compassion unfailingly poured from her. Her vibrancy was unparalleled. Her beauty remained to her last minutes of life. Kay Ann leaves her husband, Hugh and their companionship of twenty seven years. She leaves her daughters, Jennifer Iris Vitale born in 1979, and Erica Beth Matwyuk 1983, and her husband Gabe. She leaves her sister Joy Hellmann 1943, her husband Ed, and her nephews Paul Edmund Hoeft 1966 and Scott David Hoeft 1968, and his daughter Grace Rawlins Hoeft 1999, and her mother Michelle Denice (Miller) Hoeft. She leaves her ‘double’ first cousins Richard James Lance 1935 and his wife Nancy Kay (Waple) Lance, and their two daughters, their grandson and two granddaughters, and six great granddaughters; she leaves Patricia Louise Lance 1937, and her two daughters and son, her granddaughter and two grandsons; she leaves Dianne (Lance) Blasciuc 1945, and her son and daughter, and her granddaughter and grandson; and she leaves Monica (Lance) Pinkenburg 1946 and her husband Bill, and her daughter and two grandsons. And she leaves six more first cousins, and five additional second cousins. Her ashes, some with Hal’s, will find their way to places she, and he, loved, including near the home Hugh had been building for them at Cedar Key. Submitted by: Hugh Horton Published: Cedar Key Beacon, Florida August 4, 2011. Additional Comments: Notes: Died in St. Clair Shores, Mich. Married Hugh Horton on November 26, 1994. 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