Our beautiful mother, Louise Isabelle Wilson Duquette, age 99, passed away on Tuesday, July 28, 2026 in Piper Kansas, surrounded by her family. Warm and welcoming, she was the best, most loving, wife, mother and grandmother. She was wise, funny, and an enormously talented writer.

 Louise was born February 16, 1927 to Jay and Nellie Wilson in Traer, Iowa. She joined siblings Emma Jean and Joseph West and subsequently her brother Allan and sister Nellie Mae. She attended a small country grade school in Traer and graduated in 1944 from Dinsdale High School in a class of 12 students.

Louise enrolled in nursing school at Iowa City before her marriage to Norman “Duke” Duquette in July 1947. Duke joined the Air Force and was sent to Korea to fly reconnaissance missions. Louise stayed with her parents and three children, on the family farm in Traer, waiting 2 years for her husband’s return. Decades of military placement and six more children followed, spending years in Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, France, Pennsylvania, New York, and Hawaii. After his retirement from the Air Force they lived in California, Washington State, Iowa and finally Kansas.

 Mama loved all kinds of music, and she sang or whistled all the time. She often woke us in the morning by singing show tunes, undaunted by our groggy-eyed irritation. Wherever they lived, Mama and Daddy beautifully decorated their home, starting with their tiny first apartment which they painted lavender, the color the surprise result of mixing together a hodge podge of discarded paints from a hardware store. Christmas was always a magical time when Mama and Daddy transformed the house with garlands, twinkling lights, wreathes, bows, angels, stockings, a creche, and music. Mama baked the most delicate pies and tender rolls, and even when the years were lean, she kept her boisterous brood of 9 children well nourished with delicious food served at a beautifully set table. Mama had an effortlessly chic fashion sense, and even as adults, her granddaughters loved playing dress up in her closet. One of her children gave her a t-shirt that said, “Sweet little old lady? More like battle-tested warrior queen!” As gentle as Mama was, she was also strong, brave, protective and guided by integrity and love.

 She was preceded in death by her brother Joseph, parents Nellie and Jay, sister Nellie Mae, brother Allan, sister Emma Jean, granddaughter Danielle and her husband of 72 years, Duke.

Louise is survived by her nine children, Jay Duquette (Kathy), Jan Thompson (Robert), Jonell Kelsey (Chris), John Duquette (Linda), Joy Duquette, Julie Duquette (Mark), Jeff Duquette (Shelly), Jennifer Duquette, Jacqlynn Asherman (John), twenty-five grandchildren, and thirty-five great grandchildren.

Beyond her family, our mother’s greatest interest was literature. She was a prolific writer of poetry and prose with a sharp wit and wonderful sense of humor. She left behind many notebooks of stories, poetry, and family history.

In “A Rose by any other Name is not a Geranium” Mama wrote, “...the hardy and undemanding geranium, as she has for centuries, settles her thick ankles contentedly into sandy soil and spreads her heavy arms protectively about her blooms like a fat mother hen with chicks, the simple faces of her flowers staring unblinking into the sun. Practical as she is prolific, the geranium drops her leafy resilient offspring onto the ground where they send thin white probing tendrils into the earth to begin new life. And so the rose- lovely, complex and fragile- and the geranium - cheery, simple and uncomplicated - continue to survive, despite the mad uses men might put them to, side by side in the gardens of a grateful world that needs them both.”Mama wrote about loved ones lost and in heaven: “We’ll miss you around our tables when we gather. But I like to think you’ve joined a celestial one with all your family gone on before. And some night when our hectic day is over and the world has quieted, if we listen, if we listen, perhaps we can hear your dear voices, ringing out across the heavens and drifting down from the stars.” Private family services will be held at a later date.