Elsa Stammler

Elsa (Koch) Stammler age 94, formerly of Erie passed away on Friday, February 13, 2015 in Warrenton, VA.

She was born in Cogealac, Romania, 9 December 1920 and died in Culpeper Virginia, United States, 13 February 2015. She and her family lived in Erie from March of 1952 to 2011.

Elsa grew up along the Black Sea in Romania with ten brothers and two sisters until WWII caused them to relocate to Austria and then Poland. The final dislocation caused her family to flee to Southern Germany. Her husband, John, was taken prisoner in France during WWII and was a prisoner of war in the United States. With little resources and few options, Elsa fled north in Poland during the dead of winter with her one-year-old son and her niece. Evading the attacking Russian army, she found passage to northern Germany out of Gdansk. After she was reunited with her husband, they applied and were granted refugee status. Sponsored by the First Baptist Church of Erie, she, her husband and two children emigrated to the United States in 1952. As is so often the case for émigrés, Elsa and John scraped together the down-payment for a home by keeping a tight budget, Elsa making her own butter and getting permission to collect the unused fruit from the neighbors’ fruit trees.

Elsa’s father and siblings built and operated a flour mill, vegetable oil processing facility, and finally, a wool processing, including dying and cloth production, facility. As a young women, she graduated from a four-year school for fashion design and construction from a prestigious international institute for fashion in Vienna, Austria. Later, in the United States, Elsa often worked as a seamstress to increase income.

When it comes to education, Elsa was a determined supporter, often expressing her conviction, “they can’t take that away from you,” because she had seen her family lose everything twice in the great wars. Therefore, she mortgaged her home a second time to send her eldest son to college. Ultimately, all four sons completed a college education and achieved advanced degrees. Two of them served as aircraft crew members in the Air Force.

She is celebrated by her 4 sons, 11 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren. As she leaves us, she summarized her life with, "It was a good life!"

Friends may call at the Burton Westlake Funeral Home 3801 West 26th St. and Powell Ave., on Saturday February 21st, from 10am until the time of service at 12noon. Burial in Laurel Hill Cemetery. Send condolences at www.Burtonfuneralhome.com.