Loretta Kuhler of Litchfield Park Passed away on November 11, 2020. She was born in Littlefield Texas in 1941 to Delila and Phillip Simnacher. She was the youngest of four children and the last survivor of that family. She married her spouse Ronald Kuhler in 1962 at St Philip Catholic Church in Pep, Texas.
She is survived by her husband, Ron, and four children, Ron Jr. (Jill), Lance (Susie), Amanda (Dave), and Kent (Diane) and eleven grandchildren.
She attended Pep High School, graduating in 1959. She earned a BS in accounting from the University of Kentucky in 1976 and worked for Del Webb and the State of Arizona where she was manager of payroll for DHS and subsequently DES. She retired from the state in 1998.
Her favorite hobbies included hiking, fishing, gardening, traveling by motorhome and birding, with the objective being to observe and identify all the species endemic to North America.
While she has enjoyed travel and forays into exotic places, her most enjoyable parts of life were her family and grandchildren. She held them as babies, took them on outings and watched them grow to beautiful individuals. She watched grandchildren in volleyball games, swim meets, wrestling matches and basketball games. She attended many graduations with 3 now in high school, 6 in college and 1 graduated from college.
Fall and spring gardens were always an active time of year where planting and care of fruits and vegetables brought her back to her early childhood of growing up on a farm in the Pep community.
Her most notable and enjoyable travels included the 4 biennial lenten “pilgrimages” led by the Archbishop of Santa Fe to Spain, Rome and Israel, central Europe, and finally the “Footsteps of St. Paul” thru Greece and Turkey.
In her travels she saw the peaks of Kilimanjaro, Everest, Denali, Mont Blanc, stood on the Serengeti plain and climbed the steps of Machu Picchu. She crossed the Andes and rafted on the headwaters of the Amazon, entered the great pyramid of Giza, jumped with the Masai, walked thru the Taj Mahal, stood on the heights of Montserrat, and visited and worshiped in most of the holy places of Israel and Rome. She visited many of the great cathedrals of Spain, England, Italy and central Europe. She stood on the equator and tested the coriolis effect. She walked on the sands of Bora Bora and the other French Polynesian islands. She motorhomed in 49 states and visited the 50th many times. She lived a full and beautiful life and will be remembered as a wonderful wife, mother, and grandmother and will be terribly missed by all.
She was a member of St Thomas Aquinas since its inception as a parish and was a eucharistic minister for many years. She was a catechism teacher and assisted her spouse with the RCIA instruction in the early days of the parish.
Loretta’s Memorial services will be held at 10 am on November 20th, 2020 at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church, with interment of the ashes in Holy Cross cemetery immediately following. Click here for full details.
In lieu of flowers please make a donation to the Hospice of the Valley.