On May 15, 2022, Rosemarie "Mobe" Carlson (née Koensgen) died in Tinley Park, Ill. of pancreatic cancer. Rosemary was born in La Salle, Ill., on April 22, 1929, the only child of Henry John Koensgen and Sophia Paulina Koensgen (née Leisse). She is survived by her daughter Deborah Burk and her son-in-law Jim Burk, her son-in-law Dennis Bassinger, her son Daniel Servello and her daughter-in-law Tracey, her son John Servello and daughter-in-law Mary Beth, her step-son Sven and his wife Lynn, and her stepson Lars. She is also survived by 16 grandchildren and many great-grandchildren. She was preceded in death by her first husband, Daniel Servello, her second husband, Robert Carlson, and her daughter Christine Bassinger.
Mobe was almost always busy, whether keeping her house and yard, doing needlework, tending her garden or volunteering in the community or at her church well into her 80s. When she was not otherwise occupied, she would talk with her family and friends regularly, eventually in the form of a daily multi-screen text message to all her children of the last day's events or the current day's plans--a model of efficiency. With a keen intellect and acute memory, she could recount both recent events or childhood experiences in La Salle with same minute detail. Her stories of helping her father deliver milk at 4 in the morning, of a "secret" cousin who learned of his lineage later in life or of her walk across newly hardened lava flows in Hawaii were both vividly alive and peppered with her opinions about the world or the times.
In general, Mobe believed in taking the world as it is and doing whatever was before you, work or play, to the best of your ability. She worked as a milk maid and a farm hand, bomb timer assembler, shipping clerk, punch press operator, real estate agent, and tax preparer, and antiques dealer. When she was not busy with those responsibilities, she sewed, gardened, sang, collected antiques and and even wrote a novel. As a volunteer, she was served as a room mother at her kids' school, PTA president, a Girl Scout leader and a Sunday School teacher. Even into her 80s, she was an active member of the Parkview Christian Church greeting team and painter and installer of sets for the visual arts team. She was an active presence in the lives of her children and grandchildren, traveling to many an exhibition of their artistic and athletic talents and decorating her walls with their portraits.
Growing up in LaSalle as an only child, she spent much of her time in "loner" activities (as she described them): taking long bike rides to Starved Rock, swimming in the city pool, or sitting in a tree reading books borrowed from the town's Carnegie Library, which Rose (as she was called a child) loved. She also loved to sing, and would listen to the operettas broadcast on Saturday as she cleaned, singing along with such gusto that the neighbor once told Rose that she would always open the windows just to hear her. Rose learned to sew in part from her mother Sophie, who had trained to be a dress maker, and additionally from weekend classes Rose took as a child. With that skill Rose was able to "affordably dress the kids in style" when her own children were young. As a grandmother, she sewed costumes for the Lincoln-Way High School madrigals and musicals and even matching pajamas for her many grandchildren for Christmas one year. Sadly, Sophie did not live to see her lessons passed on to her daughter, as she died from cancer while Rose was in high school.
After graduating from high school a year early, Rose left La Salle for Blue Island, Ill., in the Chicago area. There she met Daniel Servello while they were both working at Willie Brothers. Even though he at first tried to get her fired as her boss on the machine floor, instead he waited until they got married in 1953 and transferred her from the machine floor to the home with a new position as housewife and mother. Together, they had four children: Deborah, Christina, Daniel, and John. While the children were young, she kept home, volunteered in the community, and sang in the choir at Alsip Congregational Church, living in Markham and, later, Midlothian.
She was widowed when Daniel suffered a fatal heart attack in 1976. Later that year, she met Robert "Bob" Carlson at a support group for widows and widowers. In August, they married, and she become stepmother to Bob's boys Sven and Lars. Together, they built a house in New Lenox, Ill., where she and Bob lived for decades. While Daniel introduced her to a strictly domestic life, Bob encouraged Rosemary to try new things, like drive. So it was that in her 40s she passed her driving test and started driving herself. At Bob's prompting, Mobe also joined him as a real estate agent and tax preparer, work that she did not relish but which enabled her to visit Hawaii for the first time on a business trip with Bob. In the years following, she also visited Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Germany, and Sweden, along with return trips to Hawaii.
Together, Mobe and Bob moved to Prescott Valley, Arizona, in the mid-1990s. They also toured the country in a Class C motorhome, driving through or visiting many of the states in the West, South and Midwest, both to see family and the country. Eventually, they returned to Illinois to be nearer to family as Bob's health declined. He died in 2000 from liver disease.
In the aftermath of Bob's death, Mobe began and completed a novel, The Room (under the pen name R. Servello-Carlson), which she self-published in 2010. The book depicts a present-day widow in her late seventies who returns to her hometown, where she befriends a young newlywed. The house that the couple live in was one the widow would visit as a child and with which she was always fascinated. Her fascination and God's guidance in the form of visions and seemingly chance discoveries and encounters leads her and the young wife to unearth the truth about the town's early inhabitants.
Lastly, it would be hard to imagine Mobe without thinking of the many dogs in her life, most recently her chihuahua Tasha, which would curl up on her lap as she watched TV or read and would curl its lips and bark vehemently at nearly anyone else. Many other dogs preceded Tasha, but one of her first dogs was Patsy who followed her around everywhere, much like Mary's lamb. Patsy would follow her to school, wait outside for her to come out to play at recess, and then accompany her on the walk home. Her father even tried to get rid of Patsy, dropping her off many miles away but she found her way back home. Mobe even had a t-shirt that spoke to her abiding love for her canine companions with the message "Your dogs will meet you in Heaven."