Ingeborg Helene White

Ingeborg Helene White (87), “Inge,” of Huntington West Virginia passed away Wednesday, January 10th surrounded by her family and their great love for her. Services will be held 11:30 AM Saturday, February 3rd at St. Paul Lutheran Church. Ingeborg’s beautiful, lively spirit, mischievous laugh, famous chocolate chip cookies, countless stories, nursery rhymes, unique sayings and way of speech, and profound empathy will be missed by all. The extraordinary love she cultivated in her life and extended selflessly and indiscriminately will live on forever in those lucky enough to have known her. Her deep love and understanding of children especially was one of the greatest blessings she bestowed upon the world – a love she showed to her own children and grandchildren, as well as dozens of babysitting kids in her over fifty years of child care and rearing. She was preceded in death by her late husband, William E. White, second oldest daughter, Martina T. White, brother Paul Rudiger Töpken, and parents Johannes and Gertrud Töpken, with whom she is joyfully reunited. She goes before her oldest daughter Ingrid White-Sturgill (Jeff), 3rd daughter Kristina Price (Josh), and son, John Paul White (Terri). She is “Oma” to Joee Goheen, Wulf Goheen (Joseph Goheen and Ingrid Sturgill), Martina Price, Skylar Price, Liam Price (Josh and Kristina Price), Samuel Plate (Terri White and Jacob Plate) and Celia White (John Paul and Terri White). Ingeborg’s life was a testament to the enduring power of love, which never fades or dies, but burns bright in our hearts because she kindled it there. To have known Ingeborg, “Ingie,” “Oma” and be loved by her, is one of the greatest privileges and blessings of our lives.

Ingeborg was born December 30th, 1936 in the small village of Selsingen in northern Germany to parents Dr. Johannes Töpken and Gertrud Rembold. Her father delivered her at home as the only doctor in their small village and they named her after Princess Ingeborg of Oldenburg. Her father called her “Ringelein.” She grew up in the flat farmlands of the north during World War II and was raised Lutheran, as she came from a long line of Lutheran pastors on her father’s side – her grandfather Paul Töpken and her uncle, Karl Töpken.

Despite the tumult of the war, Ingeborg’s childhood was a happy one. Though she endured bunkers and air raid alarms, a British tank in her front yard, the theft of her father’s car by the SS, ration cards, and dozens of typhoid stricken Polish soldiers quarantined in her garage, she also remembered plucking carrots from the garden and wiping them on her apron and eating them, pleasantly surprised their sweetness. She remembered her mother singing throughout the house in lofty soprano and her happy nature. She remembered her father playing the accordion when her beloved baby brother, Paul Rudiger, was born. She remembered blissfully lying in bed with her parents on Sunday mornings, visiting patients with her father, staying up until the last candle on the Christmas tree burned out, trading eggs for chocolate with the British soldiers, pushing her brother in the stroller, rutabaga for dinner again, her mother’s keen sense of fashion, cabbage rolls on her birthday, delighting in the English idioms she learned in school, roses in the front yard, braids tied up with ribbons, the mangle, hoop and stick, dried apples, and sandwiches along the Oste river. She remembered being mischievous – a trait that she never wholly grew out of and was beloved for. She talked of stealing the neighbors apples and cherries, peeling her bedroom wallpaper off and rolling it up so she and her brother could pretend to smoke, taking little sips of wine from the dinner table when no one was watching, answering phone calls from her father’s patients, getting in trouble in school for being too talkative, calling her grandmother “an old goat,” and ringing the church bells after dark with her best friend Ruth. She was happy, onerary, and loved.

Ingeborg went to the University of Heidelberg where she got her degree in English translation. She met her late husband, William E. White of Charleston, West Virginia, while in school. She called him “Bambi” on account of his deep brown eyes and fell in love with his gentle disposition and quiet calm. Bill was in the service and gave her a diamond ring before he had to return to the States to finish his term. She returned it because she wasn’t “a diamond girl” and they bought simple gold bands instead. Ingeborg worked as a translator for an English Colonel while Bill finished his army term. Bill returned to Germany after nearly a year and dozens of love letters and the two were married in Selsingen by Ingeborg’s Uncle Karl.

In 1962 Ingeborg immigrated to the United States to be with her husband who wanted to attend school at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia. She worked at Standard Ultramarine and Color Company on 5th Avenue as a translator. She enjoyed translating and the friends she met there, but her true passion was children. She and Bill moved to an apartment on Kanawha Terrace in Huntington after their her first daughter, Ingrid, was born. Because she loved children and wanted her daughter to have other children to play with, Ingeborg began her babysitting career which she continued for the rest of her life. In her fifty plus years of babysitting, she cared for nearly half of Huntington and often joked that she was like “The old woman in the shoe, who had so many children she didn’t know what to do.” Inge’s house became a haven for countless children and a godsend for their working parents who could trust that their children were in Inge’s good hands, and above all, that they were loved. Ingeborg gave birth to another daughter three years later, Martina, and her third daughter, Kristina, a year later. Finally, her son, John Paul, was born two years later. Being a mother was the greatest joy of her life and she loved her children with every cell in body and every breath she took.

In 1990 Ingeborg lost her second daughter, Martina, to cancer when she was sixteen. Despite this unimaginable grief, she continued to live and love fully. When asked how she got through losing a child and maintaining her faith and spirit, she said that she talked about her and made sure her family felt they could talk about her. Martina lived on through her mother’s stories and memory, as will Ingeborg in the many stories and memories of those who knew her. We remember her as a faithful servant of God, a loyal friend, an eager conversationalist, a fabulous fashionista, an animated storyteller, a baker of pepperoni rolls and chocolate chip cookies, a high kicker, a butter enthusiast, a passionate German soccer fan, an impish jokester, a nursery rhyme encyclopedia, a guardian angel and advocate for children, a beloved wife, and the best mother and Oma anyone could ask for or ever deserve. We love you and love because of you.

”Gott ist Liebe” (John I 4:16)