Today I remember my mother, who passed from this existence and into the next on March 31, 2023, with one of her best recipes: Ann Ripley’s Potato Salad.

The day mom passed, even though the calendar said it was spring, the weather was deeply cold. It was one of the harshest winters we had during our family’s more than 30 years living in Colorado. At the time of her death she was just two months short of her 97th birthday.

It was a good time to for her to let the battle of her mighty, admirable life go. She was blind, in pain and looking for rest and peace. Besides, the voracious cancer that metastasized throughout her body was making life impossible without excruciating bone pain. But that’s not the Ann Ripley we remember here today.

Ann, with a big appetite — for reading

Ann Brunner Ripley was a passionate, intelligent, vigorous and good-humored woman. As long as she could see, she was a zealous reader who never left the library without a stack of books and then, at the end of the week, would return them and leave with another stack.

As a result of her insatiable desire to read and learn, she possessed a much larger vocabulary than anyone I knew. She often used it in her language when speaking to her children, which often sent me scuttling to the dictionary to discover a new word.

I still sometimes hear her words erupt from me in conversation with someone, and I am surprised. And the person I’m conversing with usually asks what the word I used means. I try and explain to them, then I google the meaning and find that I’m using the word correctly. Thanks for that, Mom.

Ann, distinguished in every endeavor

Ann was the salutatorian of her high school class. After a career in journalism and raising six daughters, she “retired” at age 65 to become a successful murder mystery writer. Mother mixed her gardening expertise with her love for the popular literary genre. She penned 10 books over the next 15 years, first from her home in Chicagoland then Lyons, Colorado, with titles like “Mulch” and “Death of a Garden Pest.”

She was a pianist with perfect pitch, a master gardener, an aesthete, and a person who used her voice to try and make the world a better place. In 1967, she began wearing my father’s shirts with jeans daily and never changed her look.

Ann loved to challenge facts and assumptions. She was competitive and could always summon the righteousness of someone who was rarely wrong. She stayed current on events, politics and music until the end. We knew to consult her for advice on almost every topic. I miss talking to her.

Ann, fiery and artistic

First maiden, then mother and finally a matriarch—a queen, really—she presided over her world for nearly a century with confidence and intelligence. She was married to my father Anthony Ripley for 48 of those years. Twenty-plus years ago Dad came up with the name for the Lyons, Colorado newspaper: Redstone Review, during a brainstorming session with mom and their friend and founder of the paper Susan de Castro.

Ann and Tony were proud members of the Lyons literati and, although Tony proceeded Ann in death by 20 years, she continued on in the spirit of supporting, hosting and contributing to the Lyons artistic community.

Ann: from frugal to gourmet cook

As one of her six children, I remember in the 1960s that she made delicious food when company came but for her young kids she was a more frugal cook: she made chicken hearts and gizzards in gravy, spaghetti with cheddar cheese, celery and tomato lumps and other less palatable fare that she quickly threw together.

One chicken, a small grouping of peas and a part of a potato was served often but would barely feed the eight of us. Later in life, once she’d retired and had become a full-time author of murder mysteries, my mother, who preferred to sign things “Ann”, and not “mom” in her letters to her children and grandchildren, became a much better cook.

Ann’s happy ending

Ann never seemed to age until the last few years when in 2018 she became blind and needed to rely on the help of others. This noticeably softened her personality and this can-do woman openly rediscovered her humility with her children. She admitted to mistakes and apologized for old injuries that burbled up at various truth times she had privately with each of us kids. She told me that I was the apple of my father’s eye–something I knew. But this was a comment she would wait nearly my entire lifetime to tell me, perhaps because of her competitive nature.

But these last years she seemed to set competition aside and was more secure. We children were happily impressed to watch her morph into a more nurturing parent as she came to terms with the end of her life. Mom loved us and wanted us to succeed, and she wanted to make sure we knew that she and dad loved us.

Ann Brunner Ripley was confident and amazing in every sense of the word: strong, hardworking, a classical pianist, a writer, a gardener, a top-shelf analytical mind and finally a thoroughly sweet, thoughtful and reflective human being and mother. She had it all and she did it all, and even with declining health, she lived with the steely dominance of a person in charge. She managed her life with vigor and command up until the day of her death, when she passed peacefully away, surrounded by loved ones .

Below is one of mom’s best recipes that was beloved by company and her family–I can attest to its deliciousness. I hope you enjoy it as much as her family and friends have.