Edith Knipe

Edith Counter Knipe, 96, mother, sister, daughter, gardener, pioneer, reader, teacher, linguist, activist, stylist, pianist, conversationalist, guardian, friend and provocateur. Also known popularly as Tita, she was a chariot lynchpin and the major branch of an extensive family tree whose tap root descends deeply below this community. Born at St. Mary’s Hospital in Tucson to immigrant parents, she lost her father in a tragic accident when she was three. Her mother, Eleanor, alone sustained her and her sister, Genevieve, through the Great Depression by hard work and unflagging faith before marrying her step-father, Harry A. Sellers, in the 1930s. At that time an officer with the Arizona Highway Patrol, Harry gradually improved his family’s fortunes through real estate acquisition. Tita married a pioneer rancher and architect’s son, Frederic Orlando Knipe, Jr., a builder and entrepreneur, shortly after obtaining her English degree at the University of Arizona. She then proceeded to raise five children that survive her, two of which were still dependents at the time of Rick’s death in 1969. She subsequently taught school, sold life insurance and worked as a Spanish interpreter until she was 90. She resided for over sixty years at her splendid residence on East Linden Street, a unique dwelling constructed by her husband in 1946. There, she cared for her offspring, counseled the confused and cultivated plants and animals, including a sage and venerable Amazon parrot, Nacho, who presciently passed into bird heaven earlier this year at the age of 50. Tita was kind, intelligent and magnetic, invariably at the center of controversy, generally correct in her opinions, and staunchly defensive of her children. Her personal brilliance would have almost been too harsh had it not been secondary to the abundant and constant tidal flow of her love and loveliness. She will be sorely missed, but for all who knew her, the memory of her beauty and magnificence will always be vivid. What, you didn’t know her? Well then, believe me, you can really have no idea.