- Date Of Birth: August 15, 1943
- Date Of Death: October 5, 2019
- State: Michigan
Carol M. Bosley was empathetic to a fault. She had the observation and listening skills to see needs that needed to be filled. And then she assured they were filled.
Carol’s generosity and empathy were not limited to family and friends. Small kindnesses were anonymously delivered: food, clothes, a restaurant tab picked up, summer camp registration fees, and a larger tip to a student working for education. Quiet, small things in a way; meaningful to the recipients. With her death, Saturday, Oct. 5, at Rose Arbor Hospice, these touches, will be missed.
Carol’s family and friends also know and cherish the legacy of good work she leaves behind. She managed the unfunded library at her children’s elementary school in Ohio. She spent hours volunteering as a Sunday School teacher, Church Council member, visitor to the ill and dying, altar guild stalwart, and much more as the family moved from Akron to Detroit, suburban Washington, New Jersey, Northwest Indiana, and, ultimately, to retirement in Kalamazoo, Mich.
Her skill at maintaining friendships with thoughtful, heartfelt notes, in perfect handwriting, and without strikeouts or corrections, was unrivaled.
Carol was born Aug. 15, 1943, in Newburg, W.Va. to Claude A. and Rosemary Machamer. In ninth grade, the family moved to Keyser, W. Va. She graduated from Keyser High School in 1961 and in 1963 from Potomac State College of West Virginia University with an associate in arts degree before pursuing her bachelor’s degree at Fairmont State.
Trained as an educator, Carol was a magna cum laude graduate of Fairmont State College and put those skills to work both as a substitute teacher and nursery schoolteacher. She was, as her husband liked to say, “the brains of our family. She was a scholar, I just graduated.” Her children agree; she made everything work.
She met her husband of 55 years, Scott, who survives, in high school and they married on Aug. 29, 1964, before beginning their senior years in college.
She is also survived by her their two children, daughter Julie Carol Bosley, Kalamazoo; son Jeffrey Scott Bosley, daughter-in-law Julie Richards Bosley and granddaughters Megan and Devin Bosley, Larkspur, Calif.; one sister, Barbara (Michael) Gingerich, Dumfries, Va.; and one sister-in-law, Sandra Rhodes of Sebring, Fla. as well as many nieces and nephews.
Carol is a member of Trinity Lutheran Church, Kalamazoo.
