Stephanie Willa Roller Bruner

I have a memory of you coming out to the farm when Todd and I were engaged.  You and Todd and my mom chatted away and then you got to your feet and proceeded to offer us a dance lesson right there!  I seem to remember a picture of you dancing with Todd, trying to get him to relax and to be comfortable leading and conversely, trying to get me to follow - maybe that was a foreshadowing... I no longer know where the photo is, but have the memory of you here, with me.   

Aunt Stephanie, I remember when we were in California last summer. I really liked when you put Ellie's sweatshirt on.I can't remember when your smile left your face. We love and miss you!
                                            
                                                        Your niece,
                                                       Hannah Panitzke

1985: first rock concert with just friends.  Kelly in her K-car drove Steph and me to the Bryan Adams concert in St. Paul.  We sang loudly with all the songs--especially how we revised the lyrics to "Summer of '69"  to have a shadow verse:  "Back in the summer of ' 69--[we were born!]".   Before the first encore we ran up as close as we could get to the stage--got pretty close and just screamed our 16  year old heads off as the Canadian rocker jammed.

Grabbed a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken to eat super late at night at my grandma's house (she was gone--at her cabin).  We slept on the floor in sleeping bags with chicken grease on our faces. 

Driving back to Redwood Falls the next day, Steph was sick--probably from the horrible chicken the few hours before.  Kelly and I stopped somewhere to get a plastic bag for Stephanie, and all they had were large CLEAR garbage bags for us.  No fun for a sick girl.

Despite the turn of events, Stephanie always remembered our concert adventure in a positive light.  It was such a simple time, with such simple and pure fun.  Thank you, Stepher.

Stephanie and I were both working for the Forest Service many years ago. The field season had ended, so our work moved from outdoors to indoors. We were assigned to a project together to process hundreds of tree core samples that had been gathered during the Summer. We sat next to each other at a table for hours and hours and hours staring into microscopes counting tree rings. Some of the trees were very old, and we would laugh at each other when one of us lost count at 100 and had to start counting from the beginning. Everyone else was laughing at us as well, glad it was us and not them doing the counting. If I had been doing it alone, I would have wanted to quit. Being there with Stephanie, like everything we did together, made it so much fun. I would guess no two people have ever had as much fun counting tree rings as we did. We later learned the data and our counting was very valuable to people studying wind events in forestry. It's always nice to know your work is important in the world, but, for me, it's just a great memory of my adventures with Stephanie. I like to think she is saving me a seat. I love you, Steph.

My mom typed as I spoke:  I remember the last time that we were in California and the pontoon went down (took on water). Stephanie comforted all of us kids to stop crying. We also went for a bike ride together. When we left from Tahoe, she said she loved me. I love her too! I will miss you aunt Steph!