Leah F. Watterberg

Leah Fox Watterberg, nee Juanita Leah Fox, to Murray and Edith Fox in Royal Oak Michigan on October 23, 1921.  Our beloved mother, grandmother and great grandmother was finally released to rejoin her darling John who has been waiting for her.

Gifted with a brilliant mind, Leah raced through school, graduating from Michigan State University at age 20.  Unusual for the time, she started graduate school at the University of Wisconsin in nutrition – but then the US entered World War II, and she volunteered for the Women’s Army Corps.  Trained as a physical therapist by the Army, Lieutenant Fox was assigned to the Army rehabilitation hospital in Galesburg Illinois, where she met the enduring love of her life, John Per Ellis Watterberg.  She always said she got him “while he was flat on his back and couldn’t get away,” because John had contracted polio while serving in Italy.  Evenings of playing cribbage turned into a lifetime love story and 66 years of marriage before John died in 2011.  They started out in Excelsior, Minnesota, where John’s family lived, but left when their 3rd baby developed bronchitis and the doctor recommended a warmer climate.  They came to Albuquerque when John was offered a job as an electrical engineer at Sandia National Laboratories, where he worked until his retirement.

In addition to John, the two loves of her life were her family – and and her roses.  She and John had four children,  Phillip Lee, Kristi Louise, Peter Alan and Jeffrey John (Lt. Colonel, US Air Force A-10 pilot, deceased); and in their retirement dream home Leah had over 400 rosebushes.  She was a long-time active member of the Albuquerque Rose Society and the American Rose Society, and was honored by that organization with its Medal of Honor, given yearly to an individual who has made outstanding contributions to the Society and the community.  She was a part of the Dusty Roadrunner campaign to clean up Albuquerque in the 1950s, and was a driving force behind the establishment of the Albuquerque public rose garden at Prospect Park Library that the Albuquerque Rose Society maintains to this day.  She scoured the local community and the plant nurseries nationwide for donations of plants and materials, helping to establish a place of beauty and education for generations in this city.  Leah was an avid sports fan, documenting all the statistics for the Detroit Tigers as a child, then turning to football and golf later in her life.  She subscribed to Sports Illustrated and read every issue, and woe to anyone who interrupted her Sunday afternoon or Monday night football!  After an active volunteer life, she returned to the workplace as a clerk at UNM’s Zimmerman library in 1969 so her daughter (and then sons) could attend an out-of-state University.  She found her consciousness raised when she was overwhelmed that someone would pay her for her work, and then asked herself why she should feel that way.  She stayed at Zimmerman for eight years, and ended her career as head of interlibrary loan there.  After John retired from Sandia Labs, they built their dream home in the foothills where they could watch the weather go by in the valley, and watch their grandchildren grow up.  She was the rock of the family, encouraging and pushing; there when needed to watch the grandbabies so her daughter could attend medical school.  And at the end of her life, she stayed in her own home as long as possible to watch the weather go by and the roses bloom, at peace with her life.

Our thanks to the staff at the Beehive Homes (Whitman Dr.) who cared for her so compassionately for the last months of her life and to the hospice staff who made her transition as gentle as possible.  No service is planned, with internment at Santa Fe National Cemetery at a future date.