This continues my Oct 25th blog about my sister Madeleine. If you have just joined me, you might like to read my previous posts: “I Will Remember You,” “I Will Remember You ~ Part 2,” and “I Will Remember You ~ Part 3.”
This may be a little longer a read than usual, but I couldn’t stop.
Madeleine and Jere were great together. Their marriage was great. Madeleine had always been a big football fan; she and Jere were San Francisco 49ers fans with season tickets and also attended many of the local high school football games. Roy and I enjoyed living in Fort Bragg, where Madeleine and Jere knew just about everyone.
Part of Jere’s job with Georgia Pacific was to keep an eye on the forest lands that the company owned along the Mendocino coast. He spent many a day walking and driving the Company properties on the Mendocino Coast, repairing gates, checking timber growth, and the general condition of the company timber lands.
Jere went into the forest on August 27, 2011, with a fellow citizen who wanted to help him locate an illegal marijuana grow on Georgia Pacific Land that was close to privately developed parcels, just outside the city of Fort Bragg. Following an illegal irrigation pipeline on Georgia Pacific property, they approached the site of a trespassing grower; without any warning, Jere was fatally shot.
Luckily, the young citizen who had accompanied Jere got away and went for help. Saturday morning, I received a call from the county sheriff looking for Madeleine. When he wouldn’t tell me why they needed to reach Madeleine, I knew something was seriously wrong. That was a very difficult and horrible day for Madeleine.
I spent that day with her. I developed a habit of stopping at their home each morning and then after work. I was never so glad when the manhunt for the shooter was over.
If you know me personally, I had no tolerance for marijuana supporters. That was true before Jere was murdered; now I have zero respect for those who profit from and support what has now become legal and illegal aspects of the drug cartels and other activities.
After Jere’s death, Madeleine started the Jere Melo Foundation. She, along with the Jere Melo board, worked to educate the community about the need for safety and environmental health in our forest lands and open space on public and private property. How the cartels were trafficking workers by extorting them to work for their illegal grows throughout the western states. The Jere Melo Foundation took on the fight to “Take Back Our Forests.” Her mission was to inform the public about the dangers to streams, from water diversion to hazardous chemicals in the watershed. The killing of animals from ingesting the pesticides, and other wildlife eating the poisoned dead animals. The dangers extend to families visiting our public forest where armed individuals (who may not even know where they are) protect the illegal grows.
Madeleine spoke with many county sheriffs and law enforcement throughout California, Colorado, Idaho, and Oregon. She spoke at many conferences about the efforts to clean up illegal grow sites and the hazards they contain. Even with the legalization of Medical and recreational marijuana in the various states, the damage to our forests continued.
Perhaps disheartened by the legalization and the lack of meaningful legislation to curb the now-legalized marijuana in our country, Madeleine decided to move to Idaho and asked that I design a home to be built on her newly acquired property.
For six months, we worked to design a home that would be her forever home where she could be comfortable. She asked our brother’s daughter to build it for her. In 2018, Madeleine retired to Idaho.
She continued to work on things that gave her pleasure, such as quilting and genealogy. We continued to travel. Many of her friends from Fort Bragg would take trips with her to her favorite place, Hawaii. She introduced several of her friends to genealogy. They would all go to Salt Lake City to do research. We especially enjoyed being there the week after Thanksgiving. The library was fairly quiet, and the city was decorated for the holidays.
2021 was the year for our Trip to Germany for the Kornmeyer family line. I asked Madeleine if she was interested in going, and of course she was going. I wanted to visit Böhrimgen, Baden, Germany, where Roy’s paternal line had emigrated from, and take a Viking river cruise down the Rhine from Basel, Switzerland, to Amsterdam, a possible route the Kornmeyers may have taken in 1850 to board their ship at Rotterdam for New York. I chronicled that adventure in my blog, starting with “Visiting the Archivist in Radolfzell-am-Bodensee”
One of our last trips was to Ohio for the Ohio State Genealogy Conference. The excuse was that it was Madeleine’s birthday, and she wanted to visit Zanesville, Ohio, where the Francis and the Batsons had lived. John R. Batson was our 2x great-grandfather, a farmer and potter in Zanesville. Having researched the Zanesville pottery community of the 1800s, I was interested in learning more.
We experienced our first Tornado Alert while researching in the Ohio State Genealogical Library. This was another fun-filled adventure visiting historical sites and locations familiar to our ancestors.
Roy, his sister, and I were planning a return trip to Böhrimgen, Baden, Germany for May 2026.
Madeleine went with friends and family to Hawaii for her birthday in April, 2025. Roy and I were not there for her birthday. So last December was “A Melo Christmas,” and Madeleine invited us to join her in Mount Shasta for Melo Christmas.
As usual, it was family-filled with lots of good food and holiday spirit. Madeleine had a small procedure lined up for after the first of the year; that was when she was diagnosed with a very small lesion in her colon. Chemo and radiation were planned, and Madeleine called to tell me what was happening and that it was no big deal and no need for me to come. We had so many plans for this year, and she thought it was going to be “easy-peasy.” I told her I would be there for the last two weeks of her treatment and stay a third week to be there for her as she recovered. It turned out not as easy as Madeleine had planned.
My arrival was on April 3rd; Madeleine was and had been struggling with pain management from the radiation.
I was frustrated on so many levels, and then she coded… they brought her back and placed her in the hospital. She was in the hospital for a week without any control over the pain. Two days before her birthday, she said I want to go home for my birthday. We were able to get her home with hospice and caregivers on her birthday. Just after Midnight on April 17, we were called into her bedroom; she had died, and there was no resuscitation per Madeleine’s wishes. My sweet sister died. No More Pain.
Madeleine, you left me. I was not ready, but I will always have your back. I love and miss you.
Thank you, my friends and family, for holding my sister in your hearts and for the opportunity to express who Madeleine Putnam Melo was to me.