BERNE — Always cooking and gardening, Sarah Deitz was an active woman who was comfortable making pies and logging wood.

Mrs. Deitz died on Monday, Nov. 17, 2014 at Tranquility Hospice in Marietta, Georgia. She was 93.

A lifelong resident of Berne, Mrs. Deitz (née Pitcher), graduated from Berne-Knox High School. Her childhood home was on a dairy farm in East Berne, where, as an adult, she cleaned, gardened, and cooked as she took care of her brother’s domestic work.

Living in the hamlet of Berne, Mrs. Deitz raised three boys, each two years apart, with her husband, DeForest Deitz Jr. He was a county coroner for decades. He was politically active and held various positions within Albany County government, retiring as head of its parks, according to their eldest son, Richard Deitz.

“She was definitely a supporter,” Richard Deitz said of Mrs. Deitz’s political activity. “She enjoyed the fact that they were helping the Democratic Party.”

Their marriage lasted for 48 years, ending only with Mr. Deitz’s death in 1998.

When they were young, Mr. Deitz played on adult baseball leagues associated with local towns, Richard Deitz said, and Mrs. Deitz played on a local softball team.

“She was outgoing,” her son said. “She liked to do things like that for sure.”

As they got older and had children at home, the Deitzes would go bowling together every week.

She was satisfied with her job, focused on maintaining the two homes and a place for her family, her son said. She constantly cooked food or treats, like pies, cakes, and cookies, and she took pride in her gardens, which supplied nearly all of her produce and where many roses bloomed.

Before her boys were old enough, Mrs. Deitz helped her husband cut wood for heating their home. After they were grown up and out of the house, she mowed the lawn.

“When I was 21, I was on my way home from work and ran off the road,” Richard Deitz recalled. He was nearly dead and revived in the ambulance, he said.

“I was unconscious in the hospital for 17 days. She stayed in that hospital, in that room, for those 17 days,” he said of Mrs. Deitz.

As she had been during that period at the hospital, her son said, Mrs. Deitz was a constant presence for her family.

“I think she just wanted us to grow up strong and able to help anyone in the family [like] she could,” said her son.

He added, “Because she was helpful to everyone, that’s kind of what she wanted her sons to be.”

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Sarah Deitz is survived by three sons; Richard Deitz and his wife, Ruth; Thomas Deitz and his wife, Karen; and Michael Deitz and his wife, Kathleen; five grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

Her two sisters and a brother died before her, as did her husband, DeForest Deitz Jr.

Interment will be in the South Berne Cemetery on Saturday, Nov. 29, at 10:30 a.m.

— Marcello Iaia