Wilma Jeanne, nee Paule, Weisenstein, 84, of Belleville, IL, died Thursday, September 26, 2024, at the Dammert Care Center, Belleville, IL, surrounded by her loving family.
Wilma Jeanne Paule was born October 8, 1939, to Bertha and Frank Paule. Both her parents were on their second marriages and older. She was not planned, and it set a dynamic with her mother that helped forge Wilma’s character. She grew up on South Second Street in Belleville, mining the paper drive at St. Peter’s Cathedral for comic books to read on the shady banks of Richland Creek. Her garret was her home’s unheated attic dormer, where Belleville Public Library books fed her eager mind. Her life got complicated at age eight. Frank liked drinking with his buddies by the railroad tracks, and young Wilma would be sent to fill their beer bucket at the local tavern. She experimented with inertia by swinging the full bucket in circles as she walked to the shanty where her father and his buddies waited. Hanging out with his bum friends was the source of Frank’s tuberculosis, Bertha always maintained. Regardless of where her father contracted the fatal disease, Wilma and her brother, Warren, were left with a single parent. Bertha cleaned people’s houses and took in sewing to keep their home together. Warren became the man of the house, once dragging Wilma home when she tried to hang out with him and his rough friends – a story of which the siblings told very different versions.
As Wilma grew so did her gifted mind, again, fed by the Belleville Public Library and the two librarians. They gave her a part-time job during high school and offered to pay for her college if she studied library science. She thrived in high school, very social and a beautiful brunette with a sharp mind. She was yearbook editor, was part of the homecoming court and loved prom and large class gatherings, something she fostered for decades as part of her high school reunion committee. She graduated in 1957 as valedictorian and continued at Belleville Junior College with the intention of leaving the library for her own classroom.
About this time her longtime friend, Kay Peters, was dating the youngest of the four Weisenstein boys. They introduced Wilma to the oldest brother, Don, who later said “I liked her because she was smarter than I was and would have smart babies” (Hope we didn’t disappoint, Pop). They married in 1959, divorced in 1974. In between came Brad and Beth. They thrived on a diet of lima beans, Brussel sprouts and Dr. Seuss. And Wilma finished her bachelor’s in education at Washington University. She followed that with master’s degrees in teaching language arts at Webster University and education at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville as well as her school administration certificate. After declining a free education to become a librarian, her first job was as Emge School librarian. She followed that as an eighth-grade teacher at Wolf Branch School, where she also ran the fledgling library in a former janitor’s closet. (We’ll come back to libraries once more.) She was at Wolf Branch until her son hit first grade, then moved on to Belle Valley where she would spend the next 34 years. Oh, and a night job in the cash office of Central Hardware to help support her children. Teaching let her nurture other young minds and gave her summers off for car vacations that jammed as many states, parks, museums and antique stores as possible into three weeks as she followed the arrows on her AAA TripTiks. Then it was back to preparing her classrooms for the fall, with her children assigned bulletin board decorating and blacking out typewriter keys with fingernail polish so students would learn to touch type without looking. Quick aside: she never taught her son to type, but he made his living doing just that as a writer and editor. Her daughter did, and followed Wilma into teaching, as did her daughter’s daughter.
And a note about eighth graders: Wilma loved the age, despite them just coming off growly, hormonal jags as seventh graders. She liked shaping these blossoming young adults through research papers, literature and public speaking. One local superintendent who had been her student credited her with teaching him how to get his Ph.D., one index card at a time. She launched these young minds much like the librarians had launched her. And she loved her coworkers, with Friday night Scrabble games fueled by wine and her annual gag with buddy Jim Wamser, who would stand near his math classroom door and loudly declare the formula for the area of a circle was “Pi, r, squared.” Wilma would shout back from her classroom across the hall, “Pie aren’t squared. Pie are round!” Groan… She left comedy to become principal at Belle Valley North for a decade before spending her final year at the South campus where she had been a teacher for two decades.
Retirement brought volunteer work in her grandchildren’s classrooms, more travel and antiquing – her grandchildren to this day are traumatized by the sight of an antique mall – and leading the effort to give Swansea its own library. That effort thrived for a year until it became a political and tax issue and died. She also was very active with her lifelong faith home, St. Paul United Church of Christ, where she was confirmed along with her friend Kay and would attend Bible studies as an adult, serve on committees, donate a baby grand, volunteer for the Tuesday community meals and spend nearly 20 years volunteering at the Community Interfaith Food Pantry that grew from the church. She also involved her children and her grandchildren in the food pantry. The youngsters learned to appreciate volunteering there as much as they treasured accompanying Nana on her antique mall meanderings.
Books. The thread through her life. Her home was filled with them. She fostered a love of them in her children and grandchildren. Her finely bound and slip-cased Heritage Club book collection fed young family members and their studies, as evidenced by the worn copies of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” “Moby Dick” and collections of Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle. They are treasured heirlooms. The granddaughters learned to love collections of Nancy Drew, Anne of Green Gables – including a trip to Prince Edward Island – and Harry Potter. Her daughter-in-law once commented the Weisensteins “decorated with books.”
Social norms of the 1950s limited Wilma’s choices. A freer life would very likely have been spent creating her own books. A filing cabinet in her house was filled with her poetry and short stories, some published in literary magazines. A common theme was mother-daughter relationships, and the unwanted child.
Volunteer, traveler, teacher, reader, matriarch. There were awards for teaching from corporations and the state, for her volunteer work from her hometown, for her school board leadership at Wolf Branch, but the greatest honor may be the emulation of her values and character found in her two children, four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. The five little ones are unaware of just how much their lives will be shaped by her values and talents as they travel in their imaginations through books and then travel to see what they’ve read. They will absorb and spread words, offering service and good works to others – all started by a bright little girl in a garret on South Second Street in Belleville.
Wilma was preceded in death by her parents, Frank W. and Bertha E., nee Neumeyer, Paule; and her sister-in-law, Dorothy Paule.
She is survived by her two children, Brad (Dawn Elliot) Weisenstein and Beth (Bob) Manville; four grandchildren, Kara Weisenstein, Rose (Andrew) Burton, Aaron (Kayla) Manville, and Lauren (Tim) Bainter; five great-grandchildren, Ava and Grayson Bainter, Myles and Ryder Manville, and Vivian Burton; and her brother, Warren Paule.
In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the Community Interfaith Food Pantry or to the Belleville Public Library. Condolences may be expressed to the family online at www.rennerfh.com.
Visitation: Friends may visit from 4 to 7 p.m. Monday, October 7, 2024, at George Renner & Sons Funeral Home, Belleville, IL, and from 10 to 11 a.m. Tuesday, October 8, 2024, at St. Paul’s United Church of Christ, Belleville, IL.
Funeral: Memorial services will be held at 11 a.m. Tuesday, October 8, 2024, at St. Paul’s United Church of Christ, Belleville, IL, with Rev. Michelle Torigian officiating.
Burial of cremated remains will be at Lake View Memorial Gardens, Fairview Heights, IL, at a later date.
