Sharon and I were married in Clear Lake at the small Episcopal Church in Clear Lake on July 27th, 1963. We had one son, Theodore R. Sammis, II born 10 years later in Mason City on April 27, 1973. He was the namesake of my father. Sharon was the oldest child of Ward and Sadie Deets and was survived by her mother Sadie and her siblings who were also graduates of CLHS. In order of age they are Carolyn Deets Hudson, Michael Deets, Douglas Deets and Jeffrey Deets.
Sharon and her family moved from Charles City to Clear Lake in her Junior year. She was quiet, studious and probably wasn't as well known to her classmates as was her sister Carolyn. I met her in 1961 and was pleased to be her husband for nearly 28 years. After graduation Sharon worked at Mason City Country Club and in sales prior to our marriage in 1963. We moved to Des Moines to take up life together. There, she worked for the Des Moines Register. I was a road salesman and was being promoted fairly rapidly so a year later we moved to Kansas City where Sharon worked for Hallmark. The year after that we moved to New York. A few years later she supported my burning desire to break free of employment. In 1967 we came back to Clear Lake and lived on an acreage north of Pre-stress Concrete. In 1974 we moved to an acreage on the Shell Rock River west of Nora Springs.
Probably her greatest disappointment in life was not having had the chance to go to college but it would have been only for a diploma on the wall. Sharon was brilliant, an avid reader, a speed reader. She devoured books of all kinds, usually three or four a week. She studied philosophy, religion, history and the lives and accomplishments of the likes of Leonardo Di Vinci, Einstein and Freud, for example. It could be properly said that she was an intellectual.
Through life, Sharon "marched to the beat of a different drummer" and spent much time writing poetry, as an artist, and breeding horses. I remember her prediction 30 years ago during the cold war that major nations like China, Russia and America would settle their differences in the marketplace and would abandon war against each other because they were making too much money off one another! Indeed she was a unique and most often a charming, well spoken woman. She never wondered about her own convictions.
Because of the business, she had the opportunity to travel numerous times to Europe, Canada, Mexico, and to many of the United States. More often than not she preferred to stay home to follow her interests and pursuits and daily to raise a small herd of American Saddle Bred horses. We did many things together but we accomplished much more separately and apart.
Both of us had pretty strong personalities and we didn't often agree on the best way to achieve forward progress. We did agree on many things however, the main one being about how we raised our son. We co-hosted a weekly study group for about five years examining a cosmology to harmonize religion, science and philosophy.
Sharon and I separated in the weeks following the graduation of our son from High School. A year later she was diagnosed with cancer. She was at Mayo Clinic and was told that she had about 3 months to live. Sharon fought back, studied alternative therapies and pushed on. We took her to Mexico where she actually beat the large tumor Mayo Clinic couldn't operate. She went back and demanded they remove the surgically implanted morphine pump. Before hers, they had never removed one. A few years later she got caught and died of lung cancer. She passed at home with family and friends at her side. In the battle for life Sharon beat the Mayo Clinic odds by 4-5 years. .
Those who knew Sharon have missed her. I invite all who knew her to contribute their comments to this page.
