Fern Ridge Review
Creswell Chronicle
Sweet Lorane Community News
April 16, 2020
By Pat Edwards
For Jim and me, Week 5 of the COVID-19 pandemic’s self-isolation is a close repeat of Week 4. We are still being blessed by sunny and warm days where we can distance ourselves from each other out of doors while still being able to spend some time with family members. One day last week, our son, Rob, came over and cut up some of last winter’s fallen tree branches for firewood on our 5-acre homesite. While he was here, I began mowing our property on our riding lawnmower and our daughter, Michele, manned the hand mower on the hilly areas where the riding mower won’t reach. Jim even came outside for awhile once I was done with the riding mower and pulled our little trailer behind it and picked up small tree limbs and brush to put on the burn pile. We were all together, but still distanced from each other, and it felt so good to be doing something productive as a family.
It is such a temptation to begin to feel that maybe, in our area, anyway, this virus is not such a big deal. But I think that those of us who begin to feel that way don’t realize that so far, it hasn’t been a New York or New Orleans-like crisis because we have been following the directives and haven’t allowed the virus cases to spread. We are doing a really good job of containing it by distancing ourselves from each other and we must continue to follow the CDC’s directives so that we can truly feel safe again as soon as possible.
While COVID-19 has been taking up so much of our local news, there are still events taking place that affect our local families and community. The Lorane and Crow areas have each lost one our own. Recently, we learned of the accidental death of Lorane resident, Mark Lanzarotta. Mark and his wife Beth built and opened the Lanzarotta Bed and Breakfast on Hamm Road a few years ago and they were well-respected Lorane Grange members. I did not have the opportunity to meet either Mark or Beth, but our thoughts and deep condolences go out to the family for their loss.
This past week, we were also saddened to learn of the passing of Tiny Ramp who was a life-long resident of Crow, Oregon. She was the matriarch of the Ramp family. Tiny and her husband Monty raised four sons and were huge supporters of Crow High School’s athletic programs. Among the things that her friends and family remarked about Tiny were the fantastic pies, chocolate chip cookies and beautiful quilts she made over the years and, most of all, her beautiful smile. She was described as sweet, loving, kind, clever, and a li’l bit of a dynamo. Another of her good friends remembers her ruthlessness at playing card games and her love for her family. I, personally, will miss her sweet smile. To me it was her trademark. Our love and prayers go out to the Ramp family for their loss.
On a much brighter note, a couple of weeks ago, we had a live-video “gender reveal” party put on by our granddaughter, Linsey, and her husband Brent on the day they found out the gender of one of our three expected great-grandbabies. While many of us watched our Facebook computer/cell phone screens, Linsey and Brent were given 12 colored eggs in a carton—6 pink ones and 6 blue ones. We were told that only 11 of them had been hard-boiled, but no one knew (except the kind neighbor who had prepared them) which one was still raw and would indicate the gender of the baby. They began breaking eggs over each others heads until Linsey became the recipient of the raw egg—a blue one—meaning they will be expecting their second boy in August. This breaks our family tradition of having one boy per generation, but we were all excited and thrilled and it allowed us to have some fun while social-distancing.
We had already found out that another granddaughter, Stephanie, and her husband, Chad, will be having their fourth girl in June, and we just got the news that a third granddaughter, Tia, and her partner, Jesse, are expecting their first. That means that this “GiGi” is going to be really busy making Christmas stockings before December rolls around. I guess I’d better get busy!
All Things Lorane 