By Kevin Greer
Lakeside Communications Manager
Tom Mueller always finds ways to give back to Lakeside. He took a different path this past summer.
Tom, in his late 80s, could be seen at the Memorial Garden at Chautauqua Park with a garden tool in one hand and his cane in the other. It’s a place that means so much to him, especially since it’s his wife’s final resting place and it will be his, as well.
Tom’s wife, Joyce, was a stay-at-home mom for their three sons. She and the boys would spend the entire summer in Lakeside while Tom would be working in Canton on weekdays before joining them on weekends. A few years later, they bought a home in Sandusky, giving them a better opportunity to spend summers together in their Lakeside cottage.
“We had more friends here than we did in Canton,” Tom said. “Our boys were dating girls who were up here, too.”
Joyce swam in Lake Erie and walked her dogs every day of the summer. Tom calculated that she walked close to 6,000 miles during her nearly 40 years in Lakeside.
“My wife was always an open one, always a smile, always a good word,” Tom said. “I truly also think that she probably met and reacted with as many Lakesiders as anyone else.”
About 10 years after the move, Tom’s world was turned upside down. Joyce complained of having a terrible headache, and less than five minutes later, she lost consciousness. The medical staff told them she was suffering from a brain aneurysm. Only four hours later, with Tom at her bedside holding her hand, she passed away at the age of 73.
“She was in perfect health,” Tom said. “She should not have died.”
Tom and Joyce agreed that they would be cremated rather than have a conventional burial. He contacted the President at Lakeside to inform him of his plans to scatter Joyce’s ashes in Lakeside. That’s when Tom was told of Lakeside’s plans to build a memorial garden.
The Director of Religious Life said that they would need three people by law to endow the first stage of putting in the garden and dedicating it. Tom quickly committed his wife to being one of those three.
“That happened very fast and it was just like a bolt out of heaven,” Tom said. “I could not think of anything that my wife would like more than to have her remains in Lakeside.”
Once plans were approved, Tom wanted to purchase artwork for the garden. Door County, Wisconsin, is known for its art communities. At one art center, he saw an aluminum cast sculpture. It was about 4 feet high with a seagull just skimming the top of a big cascading wave. Tom talked with Lakeside and they agreed right away that it should be one of the statues at the front of the garden.
“Before I even shut my car door, I knew I was going to buy that for Lakeside,” Tom said.
After Joyce died, Tom did some rewriting of his will. He had always provided funds for Lakeside annually and decided to do another one. He went back to the same place in Wisconsin, and they had a large wave by itself. He knew that would be the companion artwork at the beginning of the garden. The dedication of the first was from Tom and his boys. The next one was from all her grandchildren, who she had taken care of many summers at Lakeside.
“Once I put the memorial statues in, I became a very integrated part of the garden,” Tom said.
Tom remarried a woman he knew back in high school about three years after Joyce died. A couple years later, she was diagnosed with dementia and her two sons immediately put her in an assisted living home. They were married 11 years until she died just before the 2024 Chautauqua season.
Tom’s sons stepped in and asked him where he wanted to go. They still had the family cottage, so he wanted to head back to Lakeside and work in the Memorial Garden. It was a bit of a flashback since his first job out of high school was working in a memorial garden. He said to some Lakeside staff that he wanted to take complete control of the garden. He has done casual work during the last several summers, so they agreed to let Tom take over.
“I always saw things that I thought could be a little bit better in the housekeeping of the garden, so it was a chance to put money where my mouth is,” Tom said. “I think the only reason anyone would give an 87 year old a manual labor job would be if he had been active in contributing to the cause. There was no problem there.”
Tom put in about 500 hours weeding, cultivating and redoing all the walking paths. He also lifted quite a few pounds of stones. His summer was tiring, but memorable.
“I have made acquaintances with old friends, and they complimented me and what I am adding to Lakeside,” Tom said. “I have met new people who are just wondering what the heck I’m doing here. I don’t hesitate to tell them, and that develops a relationship with them almost on the spot. It has been a really exhausting, but it has been so rewarding in what it has done for my soul to help me appreciate what a wonderful place Lakeside is, and the people who are here. I know where my ashes will go, they’ll be right next to my wife’s location.”
