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Norma Jean Wigfield, 1927–2025

Norma Jean Wigfield, 98, of Olney, Maryland, passed away peacefully in her apartment at Brookdale Senior Living in Olney on November 3, 2025. She had been faithfully and lovingly attended by family and Brookdale staff in the days and hours preceding her passing.

Norma Jean was born in August of 1927 in Chatfield, Minnesota to the late Harold and Josephine Mattern. She grew up on her family’s dairy farm on the edge of this small town in the rolling hills of southern Minnesota. While her dad spared her the early morning milking chores, she learned how to bake as her mother churned out pies to feed the hired hands. She rode farm horses, made life-long friendships, broke a heart or two, and excelled in school. After graduating from high school as class Valedictorian, she became the first in her family to attend college, entering the Presbyterian-affiliated Macalester College in St. Paul.  She met the love of her life at Macalester, the late Paul Russell Wigfield, who urged her to finish her studies in three years so they could marry. And she did, graduating magna cum laude with a degree in sociology in 1948. Russ and Norma Jean married that August, and moved to New Haven, Connecticut, where Russ entered Yale Seminary. Norma Jean tended their cramped apartment and learned to love New Haven pizza. A story she loved to retell was how, several years after leaving New Haven, she tried to impress her St. Paul friends by making pizza with anchovies for a dinner party—but everyone turned up their noses at the anchovies, including her.

Russ’s early career was tumultuous, and Norma Jean found herself bouncing from Georgia to Missouri and back home to the Mattern household in Chatfield in time for the birth of their oldest son, Allan, in 1951. They then moved to Fargo, North Dakota, where their second son, Mark, was born in 1954. Two years later, Russ landed an assistant chaplaincy at Macalester and they moved back to St. Paul. Over the next eight years, Norma Jean focused on raising her two sons, keeping a spotless house, cooking delicious meals—including lunch for the boys every day since Ramsay Elementary had no cafeteria—entertaining family, friends, and Russ’s colleagues and students, and supporting the new Edgcumbe Presbyterian church, which opened its doors in 1960.

While she may have been raised a somewhat pampered farm girl, she endured and even enjoyed camping on family trips—the only kind of travel the family could afford—where she was privileged to have the only cot in the tent. Her campfire shish kebab of marinated lamb and canned new potatoes were memorable.

Those happy years in St. Paul ended in 1964 when Russ did not get the promotion to full chaplain that he had sought. Disappointed, he applied for and got a position as one of the campus ministers on the new campus of Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, Illinois. Edwardsville, the seat of Madison County, had a population of only 10,000, and was situated between corn fields and St. Louis, Missouri, a big change from the Land of 10,000 Lakes and the Twin Cities, now 600 miles away.  Although Russ was the one with the new job, the move marked the beginning of a busy period for Norma Jean. With college tuition for Allan and Mark on the horizon, Norma Jean enrolled at SIU to earn a teaching certificate and help support the family. By 1967, she was teaching second grade at the nearby LeClair Elementary School. Seeing the pay bump earned by teachers with a Master’s degree, she was soon back at SIU. Late evenings she could still be found at the kitchen table—after cooking dinner and, with Russ’s help, washing the dishes—grading papers, studying her SIU coursework, and grumbling about the poor quality of some of her professors.

Despite all the hard work and distance from Minnesota, Norma Jean and Russ came to love their life and home in Edwardsville. The couple cultivated many good friends. She was an effective and respected teacher, beloved by her colleagues and students, who could intuit her bottom line of authority and rarely tried to cross it. She was a loyal alto in the choir of the First Presbyterian Church of Edwardsville, and served in the leadership of the church as an officer.

But in 1978, Russ made a second attempt to land the full chaplaincy at Macalester. He succeeded this time, and with a mixture of sadness and joy, they left Edwardsville and returned to St. Paul. The move was also motivated by the need to take care of their aging parents. As Harold and Josephine’s health declined, Norma Jean repeatedly drove the 100 miles from St. Paul to Chatfield to care for them, sometimes staying for lengthy periods. And she helped care for Russ’s mother Grace. More happily, living in St. Paul enabled them to frequently visit the northern Minnesota cabin the extended family had built in 1963, a place that became dearer to Norma Jean than their home in St. Paul. Along with paddling in the canoe with Russ, one of her favorite pastimes was to bob on a floating lawn chair in the lake, straw sun hat on head. She shrieked when the bluegills nibbled her toes—and laughed when her grandkids, Noelle and Dennis, impishly tried to sink her chair by loading the cupholders with rocks. She indulged their game every time they were in the water together.

Following the move, Norma Jean surprised Russ by not going back to work. Eleven years in the classroom was enough. Instead, she threw herself into volunteer activities, which included tutoring Hmong refugees and delivering Meals on Wheels. The couple held season tickets to the Minnesota Orchestra. She became an avid walker, strolling with friends along the Mississippi River Boulevard. She was an honored member of Macalester  Plymouth Presbyterian Church, near the college.

But after several happy years of domestic travel and European jaunts with Elderhostel after Russ’s retirement in 1986, Russ in the late 1990s began to show signs that he was developing Alzheimer’s disease. Managing a house and Russ’s illness became increasingly difficult, with Minnesota’s notorious winters not making things any easier.  In 2001, with support the support of family, they moved to Riderwood Village in Silver Spring, Maryland, a retirement community close to where Allan and his wife Marguerite and their two children live, and also not far from the Arlington, Virginia residence of Mark, his ex-wife Julie Gorka, and their three children.  Even as Russ was declining, Norma Jean threw herself into the many activities and social events at Riderwood, accompanying hymn singing at Riderwood services on the piano, hosting happy hours, taking computer classes, cooking Sunday dinners for offspring and grandchildren, and volunteering. She became a loyal alto once again, this time in the choir of Colesville Presbyterian Church.

By 2004 Russ’s illness had taken over completely, and she became a constant presence at his bedside at the Arbor Ridge assisted living facility at Riderwood. Perhaps wrongly, she never viewed herself as assertive, but surprised herself by speaking up when she saw Russ’s care was lacking. Her devotion to Russ and her gentle but firm advocacy earned the respect of staff. In the fall of 2005, she took a short break from his bedside for a long-overdue reunion with her sister and brother in California. Russ passed away before she got back, with Mark, Allan and Marguerite, and Pastor Mike O’Brien from Colesville Presbyterian at his bedside. Though long expected, the loss of her partner after 57 years of marriage was devastating. Initially, she bemoaned her absence from his passing, but slowly came to realize her absence gave him the permission he needed to leave. Her strength and the close bonds she nurtured over the years with friends and family made steady recovery from her loss possible. But Russ was always on her mind, and her grief lingered quietly below the surface. Family gatherings and activities with grandchildren, games of Rummikub and Scrabble, trips to Minnesota to visit nephews and nieces, mid-Atlantic jaunts with Allan and Mark, long country drives to view fall foliage, ice cream, pie, coffee, and the occasional gin and tonic continued to bring her great joy.

All of that was interrupted by the pandemic of 2020, the year she turned 93. She never quite recovered from the isolation and disconnection of that period, even losing all interest in the church. And she was showing increasing signs of mental decline that was eventually diagnosed as vascular dementia. Although her illness was less devastating than Russ’s Alzheimer’s, she needed the support of assisted living, and the family moved her to Brookdale in 2023. And although her capacity to develop new relationships, along with her hearing, was diminished by that time, she still found dining room companions at Brookdale. She became whimsically known for her loud—and assertive—calls for coffee and ice cream after lunch and dinner. Staff, from laundry attendant to executive director, mourned her passing.

Norma Jean is survived by a brother, Allan Lee Mattern; her sons, Allan Wigfield and his spouse Marguerite Tom-Wigfield, Mark Wigfield and his spouse Tuan Bui; grandchildren Collin Wigfield-Gorka, Cara Wigfield-Gorka, and Jacob Wigfield-Gorka, Dennis Tom-Wigfield, Noelle Tom-Wigfield; great-grandchildren Jude Tom-Wigfield, Norah Tom-Wigfield, Jasper Seeley, and Milo Seeley. In addition to her parents and husband, Norma Jean was preceded in death by her sister Joanne Overland.
A memorial service for family will be held on December 6, with details to be announced. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to the Alzheimer’s Association.
Norma Jean lived a long and virtuous 98 years, always putting others before herself, and loving her family fiercely. It is one thing to live long; it is another to live well. She will be missed.

Memorial music, hymns and scripture requested by Norma Jean
· Adagio for Strings (Samuel Barber)
· I Know That My Redeemer Liveth (Handel)
· Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee
· Be Though My Vision
· O God, Our Help in Ages Past
·      Psalm 121
·      Psalm 139: 1-12
·      Romans 8: 31-39
·      John 14: 1-7
· Amazing Grace, to be played by Jacob Wigfield-Gorka on the sax

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