Evangeline Belle Pentz

Born November 22, 1921 in Dickinson, North Dakota, the fourth child of six to parents Bertha and Henry Moldenhauer, Evangeline Belle Pentz (Moldenhauer) died peacefully of natural causes at age 99 on February 9, 2021 in Toledo, Ohio. Her childhood was one of vigorous labor and hardship, working the farm of her family in North Dakota’s western frontier and persevering the rigors of Dust Bowl crop failures and the Great Depression, but forging her deep commitments to honesty, faith, service, and family. Seeking a better future for herself, with only $25 in hand, she courageously left the family farm at age 19 in 1941 and came to Toledo, Ohio to start a new life. She worked as a homemaker at the Daniel Summers residence in Ottawa Hills, where she stayed for six enjoyable years and developed lifelong friendships. She polished the fine silver to a brilliant shine, cooked and served elaborate dinner parties, made precise “hospital corners” with the bed linens, and tended to the details to create a lovely and comfortable home environment. Having a bedroom and bathroom of her own, $5 of weekly pay, and the conveniences of city living, she often said afterward that “I felt as though I had died and gone to Heaven!” During this time, she and her loving late husband, Edward G. Pentz, Jr., courted and married on August 16, 1947. Eve found great fulfillment in family life and in raising three loving daughters. Although she couldn’t continue in her career once married, she took great pride in homemaking, teaching her daughters all that she knew, encouraging their personal growth, and seeing to it that they received college educations and attained professional careers. She worked tirelessly on behalf of her family, even making most of the clothes worn by her daughters during their childhoods, their bridal gowns, and beautiful dresses for her mother-in-law. She was an outstanding seamstress, and her deft work by hand and sewing machine produced everything from formal wear to outerwear, cushions to fine draperies. She also trained her daughters in sewing, quilting, and crocheting. Her clothing designs were much the envy of friends of her daughters and mother-in-law. Cooking and baking were also her fortes. At the Summers residence, she perfected her skills for hosting large dinner parties and carefully sequencing the courses. For decades, she prepared Sunday dinners nearly weekly for all of her family. She also planned and cooked dozens of funeral dinners for groups of 100 or more at Our Saviour Lutheran Church. Everyone loved her food, with special fondness for her amazing cinnamon rolls and angel lemon pies. She also taught her three daughters how to cook and bake, and spent many hours teaching her grandchildren how to bake breads and rolls. Free time and leisure were scarce in the first decades of Eve’s adulthood, just as in her childhood. With Ed’s busy career and long hours, Eve often managed every function of the household, including mowing the lawn, shoveling snow, and paying bills. She also spent the early years of her marriage to help her widowed sister and to assist in raising her niece. Eve always made time for her family without fail, but worked ever harder and efficiently so that she could also make time for her intellectual interests and volunteering. Her lifelong interest was in human health and she read books on the subject by the hundreds. She always was a champion for healthy eating and self-care, and studied and practiced reflexology and homeopathy. She enjoyed church and her volunteer work there, teaching Sunday school and bible school, serving as a Luther League youth advisor, and working with Church Women United. She also volunteered in the first grade classroom taught by her daughter, Ruth, worked Lucas County’s voting booths, and joined a team led by a physical therapist to help a developmentally disabled child learn to walk. A major source of satisfaction was her many years as a volunteer literacy teacher to non-reading adults and teenagers in the Laubach Literacy program of the Washington Local Schools. Yet, despite Eve’s love for knowledge and teaching, her agrarian upbringing in North Dakota gave her only an eighth grade formal education in a one-room schoolhouse. Wanting always to complete high school, in 1979 at age 57, she earned her Ohio Certificate of High School Equivalence from Whitmer High School. By Eve’s 50s, her children were grown and she finally had a car of her own. This era of her life provided a freedom that she had never known. Eve and Ed began traveling far and wide, visiting many of the national parks and nearly every U.S. state. They took at least 15 ocean cruises and many transcontinental flights to visit Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Panama, Caribbean islands, Mexico, and other faraway places. By their mid 80s, they had traveled to five continents, and took a memorable final cruise to Alaska. Also in her 50s, Eve became a grandmother, eventually having eight grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. She spent hours giving the grandkids foot and back massages, reading to them, listening to their stories with interest and unwavering attention, and teaching them about her childhood, good health habits, and how to make friends and help other people. She gave wonderful gifts to her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, making great effort to find the perfect item and to ensure that each family member was treated equally. Eve’s family and friends will forever revere her honesty, decency, intelligence, work ethic, patience, exceptional kindness, and the enlightened, egalitarian values that she and Ed upheld and practiced. Eve and Ed inspired their daughters, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren to learn all that they can, do their best, be kind to others, and embrace human diversity in its many forms. Positive and motivating until the very end, Eve often told her family and friends “You can do anything you put your mind to.” Eve was preceded in death by her great-granddaughter, Kennedy, grandson, Sean, husband, Ed, lifelong friends Frieda, Lorene, and Agnes, and her siblings and parents. She is survived by her three daughters, Mary, Beth, and Ruth, two sons-in-law, seven grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren. She will have a private funeral and ceremony to be interred at Toledo Memorial Park in Sylvania, Ohio. Messages of condolence can be made through the website of Walker Funeral Homes at WalkerFuneralHomes.com. Those who wish to make a donation to the Imagination Library in Eve’s memory can do so at ImaginationLibrary.com. Eve and her family thank the many caring staff at Ohio Living Swan Creek.