of Marshall, AR

May 31, 1942 - November 18, 2024

Rosa Lee (Marling) Wellman (May 31, 1942 November 18, 2024)

In 2010, our then 68-year-old mother, Rosa Lee (Marling) Wellman, ran Idaho's Middle Fork of the Salmon with my sister Tiffany, Tiffany's dog Shelby, and me. A trip with just three people and a single raft - a 3-person paddle raft so she had a paddle in hand through every rapid - through 100 miles of wilderness whitewater (and that year forest fires) through the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. At the end, she, like Tiffany and me, wanted nothing more than to just go back to the top and do it again. Our mother was almost always up for a good adventure.
Which is probably part of why, at 19 years of age, she eloped from Portland, Oregon, and, in 1962 in San Francisco, married her husband of 62 years, Robert Charles Wellman. Eventually they would make their way back to his home state of Arkansas where they would together raise five children.
Years before that 2010 trip, our mother, Tiffany, and I had taken our sister Melissa's then maybe 4-year-old and 6-year-old children Jessica and Jennifer whitewater rafting on Colorado's Arkansas River. A few years later our mother, father, and Tiffany took our brother Troy, his wife Shelley, and their maybe 4-year-old and 6-year-old children Shannon and Chelsea down the Green River below Wyoming's Flaming Gorge. Our mother believed that adventures should start young, and, as demonstrated in 2010 on the Middle Fork, that one was never too old for another one!
Our parents (and grandmother) swam whitewater with us in just lifejackets, inner tubed, or canoed with us on Arkansas's Big Piney Creek, Illinois Bayou, sections of the Buffalo River, and many other creeks and rivers that slip my mind. And eventually camped in every state west of the Mississippi.
As her five children grew up, we took countless road trips from Arkansas to both the east and west coasts, driving and camping as far away as Alaska. My father was often working on the road, so quite a few of these trips we met him somewhere out west. For example, for the Alaska trip, we left Arkansas days after school let out and meandered west until meeting him in Portland, Oregon, for the drive up the Alaska Highway. When vehicle troubles left us stranded on the side of the highway, think two lane gravel ''highway'', our father eventually hitchhiked to Alaska in search of parts and, while he was gone, our mother insisted on making a hot meal for every trucker who stopped to see if we needed assistance. Our mother didn't believe in sending anyone away hungry.
Sometimes we had plans, but most often it was simply going places we hadn't been before and only turning towards home once we'd used up either half our time or half our money. We didn't always guess correctly on how long our funds would hold out. Our mother believed in spontaneity and resilience.
More than once we picked up stray people along the way and sometimes delivered them hundreds of miles off our not-quite-planned route. Our mother firmly believed that people in need shouldn't be left on the side of a road, especially in the vast, mostly empty, reaches of the American West.
She loved Wyoming's Flaming Gorge and the Tetons; Oregon's Columbia River Gorge, its coast, and Portland's Rose Gardens; and Arkansas Ouachitas and Ozarks, so in the years she lived near those, it didn't take much for her to want to share those locations with visitors. Especially after the bison, elk, and trumpeter swans took up residence on Arkansas' upper Buffalo River. Our mother believed in protecting and sharing the beauty around us.
After her children had all left home, she eventually began working for the Arkansas Department of Human Services where her work drew commendations and praise from then Governor and Mrs. Clinton.
Later she returned to college and earned her nursing degree from Western Wyoming Community College. After gaining enough hard-earned professional experience, much at the Wyoming State Insane Asylum (which, if you'll forgive the phrasing, truly involved some crazy stories), she spent several years as a traveling nurse spending time in beautiful places she wished to experience, including Monterey and Tahoe, before finally returning to her beloved former trout farm outside Marshall, Arkansas. She ended her career after working several more years as a hospital nurse and as a home care nurse in Arkansas. Our mother believed in taking care of others.
She had taught herself to paint and, while I was growing up, she often won competitions at the county and state levels and some of her work was recognized regionally and sold professionally. She returned to painting what she described as cheerful, happy paintings in her later years.
She taught herself to quilt and did so with similar successes. I've no idea how many people around her were gifted with quilts over the years, but it was a large number! Our mother believed in creativity.
She loved music. In 1972, I remember Helen Reddy's ''I Am Woman'' album being on infinite repeat for a month or two after it came out. But, while she had her favorites, her taste spanned multiple genres and generations, and whenever I drove through Arkansas, she always wanted to know what new artists I had with me. As recently as earlier this year we were discussing the rise of Chappell Roan. It was at least partially her love of music that led to our family owning Rainbow Records in Russellville. Any of the stories I've told over the years about music or concerts derived from our mother's love of music!
She read voraciously. If you ever wondered why we sold used books at Rainbow Records, now you know!
She was intensely competitive at cards and Scrabble, but preferred playing for money even when she was playing her own kids. We learned early that if one wanted to keep one's money, it was better not to play her.
She *adored* animals.
When I was young, she kept many tropical fish including angel fish and betta fighting fish and coaxed both species into breeding. It's not easy to get fish who use bubble nests to successfully breed in a household full of children and dogs, but somehow she did.
Over the years, she raised Persian and Siamese cats; Dobermans, German Shepherds, poodles, and toy poodles; chinchillas, rabbits, goats, cows, and horses; and endless varieties of chickens, ducks, geese, guineas, and turkeys. She later fell in love with Chihuahuas, particularly Skeeter and Lizzie. She occasionally expressed regret that we'd never had alpacas, bison, llamas, or ostriches…but I think she was (mostly) joking about the bison.
She had an insanely green thumb and I couldn't begin to enumerate the number of supposedly hard to grow plants that occasionally turned her house into a jungle.
I do remember the year that she decided that she wanted ''a few cherry tomatoes'' in that year's gardens, one garden was not enough, so she bought a punch-and-grow ''guaranteed at least 12 plants'' and then diligently transplanted each seedling into its own cup and had us plant *every* *single* *one*. As tomato season finally wound down that summer, I was never happier tilling under plants than I was that year's resulting 200+ cherry tomato plants!
She was occasionally interestingly wicked in her politeness. When one phone call involved one too many dismissive comments from the caller (a non-cooperative insurance adjuster I think), I heard her inform them that she was much too polite to call them an *ss and hang up on him…so could they please wait a moment while she got her son to do so for her. Being a dutiful son, I, of course, fulfilled her request.
She also gave us room for our own adventures, so when the police called and asked her to pick me up 50+ miles from home because a truck had clipped my bike, her only question was how far I'd made it before I'd started back home. And when my brother Troy and I decided to take a week-long canoe trip up the Arkansas River and the remnants of a hurricane blew in, she simply searched the waterside camps along our route until she found us, took us home, dried us off, and, after the storm passed, dropped us back off to continue our adventure.
I know that my siblings and nieces all have similar stories of their adventures with our mother, but even if I knew them all, I couldn't begin to write them all, and my descriptions couldn't begin to capture the experience of living them.
I relate these stories to you today because, on Monday, November 18, 2024, our mother, Rosa Lee (Marling) Wellman succumbed to complications during heart surgery and thus will no longer be able to relate her stories herself.
This, her next adventure, she started without us.
So her husband, of 62 years, Robert; her children, Tiffany, Timothy, Melissa, Troy, and me, Michael; her grandchildren, Jennifer, Jessica, Chelsea, and Shannon; and her great-grandchildren Cameren, Kinsley, Maddex, the as yet unnamed one coming in February, Luke, and Phoebe; will all miss her laughter and love as she relates those adventures. As will numerous nieces and nephews, neighbors, and friends.
But, in whatever afterlife there may be, I'm sure she was greeted by a veritable menagerie of fish, birds, cats, and dogs. And maybe, this time, finally, some llamas.
Written by Michael Warren Wellman.

Memorial services for Rosa will be 10:00 AM Wednesday, November 27th, 2024 at Roller-Coffman Chapel in Marshall, Arkansas with Bro. Jim Arnold Jr. officiating.

Sign Guestbook

6 Condolence(s)