Dale L.

Armentrout

Dale Armentrout

Musician, teacher, conductor, dancer, radio engineer. My big sister.

She danced professionally as a child (Chicago Ballet's "Nutcracker"; Chicago Lyric Opera's "Faust"). She graduated from Western Illinois University with majors in oboe and music education. She taught band at an elementary school in rural Illinois before moving to NYC for a master's degree in music education at Columbia Teachers College. (While working toward her master's degree Dale would often busk with a flute in front of her favorite donut shop at Broadway and 50 ^th Street, earning real money standing alone on that corner in 1970's Times Square. She was short but tough.) She was also a radio engineer for several years at WQXR radio, the classical music station then owned by the New York Times.

In her early 30's Dale's life was derailed by schizophrenia. There were some bad years she managed to survive through sheer will and resilience. Eventually the right medication found her and she had two good, stable decades living with our mother in Lake Mills, Wisconsin, where she taught piano and played in and conducted the Lake Mills City band.

And then her life was derailed again, by cancer and dementia after our mother died in 2016. The cancer finally won.

Since late last summer, after moving to Lake Mills, I have been able to spend almost every day with Dale, in my car, at the lake, admiring the natural world while listening to classical music on the radio. (Windows open and mask on until we were both vaccinated.) We watched as the lake eventually froze over and then melted again; we watched the seasons change through the changes in the trees. Dale always exclaimed over the trees, always talked about getting her old camera out again. This is fun, she would almost always say. We talked about the music in depth and detail. Advanced dementia notwithstanding, she never lost her musical intelligence. We still made each other laugh. Of course, with dementia, she remembered nothing the next day, but no matter.

Dale handled her life's many challenges with courage and grace. I am really going to miss her.