Biography

Cobleskill (Schoharie County): Alice Muller 90, of Early Woodlands Apartments died Thursday, March 25th after being stricken.Alice was born February 18, 1920 in Albany a daughter of Alva and Edith (Bellinger) Tryon and graduated from Schoharie High School in 1938. She was a homemaker and had also worked at the former Elm Store in Schoharie, Wohl’s Department Store in Schoharie and Cobleskill, the Schoharie County Jail as Matron and Cook and also assisted on the family dairy farm in Howes Cave and Warner Hill Road in Schoharie.

Mrs. Muller was a member of the Colonial Heritage Association, the Schoharie County Historical Society, Home Bureau at Cooperative Extension, Schoharie Valley Eastern Star, 4-H leader, Schoharie 50-Plus Club where she also served as President, volunteer at the Cobleskill Regional Hospital Auxiliary and Scho-Wright Ambulance Service, a longtime member of Bethany Evangelical Lutheran Church where she also served on the Council and was a Sunday School Teacher at the former Community Church in Schoharie.

She was married to William Clifford Muller on May 18, 1941 until his death October 18, 2006. Survivors include her children Jeanne (Lester) Hay of Carlisle, Barbara (C. Joseph) Waring of Delanson, James Richard (Kathryn) Muller of Holland Patent and Robert William (Linda) Muller of Delanson, one sister Marie Muller of Schoharie and several grandchildren, great-grandchildren and several nieces and nephews. She was predeceased by one brother William Tryon in January of 2004.

A service to celebrate the life of Alice Muller will be held at 2:00 PM on Monday, March 29th at the Bethany Evangelical Lutheran Church, Church Street Central Bridge with burial following in the Old Stone Fort Cemetery, Schoharie. There will be no calling hours.

Memorial contributions may be made in memory of Mrs. Muller to Bethany Evangelical Lutheran Church, PO Box 273, Central Bridge, NY 12035 OR to Scho-Wright Ambulance Service, PO Box 325, Schoharie, NY 12157.

I spent Friday night, 12 March, with Mom.  I called her from Lawyersville and asked her what she wanted me to pickup for dinner.  She told me to choose, so I picked up Arby’s as I knew she had eaten from there before and liked their curly fries.  We had dinner, visited and I showed her a bunch of pictures that were on my computer.  I washed dishes and we looked at the newspaper to see if there was a good basketball game to watch.  We ended up watching Georgetown play Marquette in the Big East Tournament semi-finals. We watched with the sound off and either provided our own commentary or talked about other things; Eric’s activities, the re-modeling on the house, etc.

She especially liked the story I told her about Eric’s school having a kitchen fire and him eating lunch in the middle school where their pizza was so much better because they put more salt and more sugar in their recipe.  It was a story she asked me to repeat when she was in the hospital later on.

We went to sleep after the game and I slept through the night.  About 6:20am I heard a noise in Mom’s bedroom and then some unintelligible speech.  I called out “Mom, are you OK?”  When I didn’t hear a reply I went in to check where I found her trying to use her walker get to the bathroom.  She was slumped over to the left side, her speech was unintelligible, but her intent was clear.  I immediately called 911 and worked to get her lying down in her bed.  Once I got her resting I called Jeanne and told her of the situation and asked her to inform the rest of the family.

On Thursday night I woke up at 3am and was unable to sleep.  After an hour of tossing and turning I snuck out to the hot tub for 45 minutes. It was a clear night and I saw two brief flashes; one to my west and one to the east; that might have been shooting stars.  But there was one long, unmistakable shooting star heading south to north directly overhead.  I felt strongly that was her passing.

I feel fortunate that I was able to feed Mom several meals and quench her thirst with ice chips while she was hospitalized at Ellis.