WEISS, Rosemary COLLINS 1956 - 2025

WEISS, COLLINS

Posted By: Joey Stark
Date: 2/16/2025 at 14:15:43

"Southeast Iowa Union / Fairfield Ledger"
Tuesday, January 28, 2025
Page 4, Column 1

ROSEMARY COLLINS WEISS
Fairfield

Rosemary COLLINS WEISS of Fairfield, Iowa died peacefully at the University of Iowa Hospital on January 25th with family by her side (note: in Iowa City, Johnson Co., IA). She was born in Larchmont, New York on April 26, 1956, the eighth of Rosemary and William COLLINS's nine children. She received her bachelor's degree in special education from Boston College in 1978. Her next 15 years were spent teaching in Head Start and at Maharishi School, as a travelling governess, and teaching Transcendental Meditation (TM). I September 1987 she met the love of her life, Terry WEISS, and they married less than a year later. Their beloved son Thomas was born in 1993, three years after they moved to Fairfield from Kauai.

Rosemary had an appreciation for the whole Fairfield community. She was drawn there by the abundance of meditators and loved beginning her teaching career at Maharishi School. She also spent 17 years teaching special education in the Fairfield Public School District at Lincoln and Pence Elementary Schools where bonds with her fellow teachers and students were quick and lasting.

She loved adventure, whether visiting in-laws in Canada, siblings, nieces, and nephews along the East Coast, cycling in New York City with friends, exploring the US and Europe on sister trips, or twice meeting the founder of TM, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India. Periodic COLLINS family reunions in Canaan Valley, West Virginia were always a great source of pleasure as Rosemary relished re-connecting with some 80 generational family members from around the country.

Despite being diagnosed with kidney disease in 2016, she never let it slow her down. For example, she and Terry enjoyed the trip of a lifetime in 2023 visiting Thomas in Ireland, her ancestral homeland. Rosemary was a global traveller but found just as much enjoyment in the simple things, like coffee with friends or meditating in the domes. Rosemary will be sorely missed from Fairfield to Calgary to New York and Connecticut to Ireland. Her heart was big enough to fill all those spaces and everywhere in between. Her tremendous capacity to share her joy, her intelligence, her joie de vivre, and her brilliant spirit will now fill and mend the broken hearts of her large and loving family and many, many, many friends.

Rosemary is survived by her husband Terry and her son Thomas of Galway, Ireland, her siblings William (Lynn), Edward (Pam), Catherine (John), Carolyn (Michael), Michael (Sandra), and Tracy (David), her brother-in-law David (Edith), her sister-in-law Mary (Wade), and numerous nieces, nephews, grand-nieces, and grand-nephews. She was predeceased by her parents, her brother Neil and his wife Kathryn, her brother Patrick, her niece Jeannie, her nephew Christopher, her father-in-law Alvin, and her mother-in-law Anne.

A memorial service will be held in Clarke Auditorium at Maharishi School on Saturday, February 1st, from 10-Noon and can be accessed at this link: https://zoom.us/j/93098907900?pwd=Lu9eYjs15OXfeAy8zRDD1HHqI0vON7.1. In lieu of flowers, contributions toward a memorial bench on the Fairfield Loop Trail can be sent by Venmo to "@Thomas-Weiss-5" or checks to Terry at 2020 Jade Lane, Fairfield, IA, 52556. Excess contributions will be donated to The Lord's Cupboard food pantry in Fairfield.

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*Transcribed for genealogy purposes; I have no relation to the person(s) mentioned.

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