ALTAMONT — Florine Writesel had a hardscrabble life, growing up during the Great Depression, moving so often that she never finished a school year in the place she began. She was pregnant at 16, unable to graduate from high school. But, rather than being narrow and stingy, she was generous and loving. She raised her children to believe in following their dreams, and followed her own as well.

Mrs. Writesel was diagnosed with abdominal cancer three weeks before she died on Sunday, July 5, 2015, at St. Peter's Hospice Inn where she received loving care, her family said. She was 81.

“A lot of people describe my mother as sweet,” said her daughter, Allyn Writesel, “but she had a fiery personality. My ex had a word for it — têtu, in French, it means headstrong. She’d argue with you. She was an avid political follower; she was far left.”

“She brightened the lives of all those who met her,” her family wrote in a tribute. “She lived her days with joy and this was infectious.  She encouraged her two daughters and five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren to pursue their dreams.”

Through tears, Ms. Writesel referred to words her niece, Jessica Arias, had written about her grandmother. “One of the last things Mom told her was to go ahead and love because that’s one of the best things in life,” said Ms. Writesel.

Florine Writesel was born Florine Brotherton on Nov. 20, 1933 in Williams, Minnesota in a log cabin in the woods.

Her father, Lee Brotherton, an electrician, had stopped his schooling in the eighth grade and “thirsted for education,” said Ms. Writesel. Her mother, Opal Brotherton, worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps “cooking a huge amount of food for the guys in the camp,” said Ms. Writesel.

During the Great Depression, Mrs. Writesel’s family moved back and forth between Ohio and Minnesota. “They moved so much, my mother was never in any one school for a whole year,” said Ms. Writesel.

Mrs. Writesel was a junior at a high school in Ohio when she became pregnant. “They were both 16,” said Ms. Writesel of her mother and her father, Kenneth Edwin Writesel. “They decided to get married. Neither of them graduated from high school.”

She went on, “My father and she stayed together until I was 23.”

Describing Mrs. Writesel as a mother, she said, “She was immature. She was always very loving and accepting, and encouraged us to do whatever we wanted, no matter what the world said. I became on anthropologist.”

In 1963, a month after President John F. Kennedy was shot, Ms. Writesel said, her father, an insurance salesman, was transferred to Dallas. There, Mrs. Writesel was an activist in the civil rights movement as a member of Saint Luke’s Presbyterian Church.

As black families moved into their neighborhood, white families moved out, said Ms. Writesel. “We made a commitment as a white family to stay with that church,” she said. “We had a white preacher and a black preacher.

Mrs. Writesel was an elder in the church. “They had talk-backs after the sermon, asking for reaction....We got to know black people. We had dances and Bible camp and pizza parties,” recalled Ms. Writesel who was 15 or 16 at the time. “White people made threats because we had black people in our home.”

Ms. Writesel is currently serving her second stint in the Peace Crops. The first time, she was in her 20s. Now, in her 60s, she is in Swaziland, doing community health outreach to combat the AIDS epidemic.

Her mother was involved in social work as well. Mrs. Writesel went back to school in her middle age, first at Dallas County Community College and then at the University of Texas at Arlington, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology. She also earned a master’s degree, in social work, finishing at age 51.

“She and I started our master’s degrees at the same time and ended at the same time,” from 1980 to 1984, said Ms. Writesel.

“Education was the most important thing to her,” said Ms. Writesel. “We were both very poor after my dad moved out. We scraped together to make sure I finished my college degree.”

Her mother’s specialty was in minority aging. Mrs. Writesel served as president of the Greater Dallas Housing Opportunity Council. And she worked as a social worker for the Visiting Nurses Association in Dallas.  “She went to the poor neighborhoods to see that people got the services they needed. They were dying,” said her daughter.

After living for 45 years in Dallas, Mrs. Writesel moved to Altamont in 2008. “We insisted,” said Ms. Writesel of herself and her sister, who lives in Manhattan.

Mrs. Writesel “loved her apartment from the moment she set foot in it,” her family wrote in a tribute. “She made friends wherever she went.  Her neighbors at Altamont Oaks and her friends at the Spinning Room and members of the Hamilton Union Presbyterian Church will all miss her.”

“She knitted up a storm,” said her daughter. “She designed her own skirt and knit it. At the end, she couldn’t do the math so she just knit flat things, like scarves. She would say, whatever the yarn wanted to make, it would.”

Mrs. Writesel was a faithful member of the Hamilton Union Presbyterian Church in Guilderland. “She was not sure she believed in Jesus Christ or even in god,” said her daughter. “She loved the theology.”

Mrs. Writesel, who was diagnosed with memory loss, joined a group at the Alzheimer’s Association, and was writing a memoir.

“She encouraged all of us to follow our dreams,” concluded Ms. Writesel. “She had a joy each day getting up; she could do whatever she wanted.”

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She is survived by her daughters, Allyn Writesel of Peace Corps Swaziland and former son-in-law, Jean Pierre Munsie of Colonie, and Deborah Arias and son-in-law Jorge Arias of New York City; her grandchildren, Erin Kellerman of Los Angeles, California, Jessica and Matthew Arias of New York City, and Jimmy and Nadya Munsie of Colonie; her great-granchildren, Esther, Sam, and Mira Kellerman and Adam Arias; her nephews, Bob and Jim Brotherton; her sister-in-law, Patsy Brotherton of Grove City, Ohio; and her Aunt Mavis Boyer of South Dakota.

Melissa Hale-Spencer