Susanna Friesen

In the words of her daughter, Agnes Klassen:

"Our mother had a lot of brown hair which she wore in a bun rarther high off the nape of her neck throughout her adult life. She was tiny and had nicely shaped legs and neat ankles. Her eyes were gray and they could look so sad and disappointed when we were bad. Yet she was full of fun and laughter and often pulled funny faces for the benefit of little children. She was a good conversationalist and when Mother was at a social gathering there seemed to be no end of things to talk about. She loved poetry and there is a booklet still extant of poems that she liked and copied out in her own hand. It was her pride and joy to have her children recite poetry with expression, "mit Betonung", as she said. How she coached us! We learned to read and write German, first at home with the old German Fibel, and later on at Saturday classes where my cousins Neta Kliewer and Susan Neustadter taught, and later still at the classes that the Reverend John Klassen taught at the Dundurn Mennonite Church.

My mother had asthma and had periodic flare-ups of rheumatism. Both of these afflictions contributed to the heart ailment, which finally brought about her death in 1937. Yet when she felt better, she was very much alive. How she loved the excursions to the Blackstrap. With our empty 5-gallon cream cans to be filled in a day's pickig with ripe and delicious Saskatoon berries. We could eat as many as we wanted fresh and the others were canned in two-quart sealers or mixed with gooseberries and made into delicious tarts and pies."