Rita Lambert Obituary

Rita G. Lambert

Epsom, NH - Rita G. (Petit) Lambert, age 98, passed away on January 26, 2023 after a year of declining health resulting from a heart condition. She left us with her affairs in order, having already written her obituary (not this one) and with her name engraved on her tombstone over half a century ago. This was not a woman who went to her death unprepared because, as she taught her seven living children, you should never leave it to other people to clean up your messes.

The only living child of Joseph T. and Aurora (Lambert) Petit, Rita was born on December 23, 1924 and grew up in Manchester. Rita skipped two grades in elementary school and spent the rest of her life lamenting her own supposedly inadequate math skills. Others' inattention to spelling and the younger generations' deficiencies in naming state capitals elicited exasperated declarations: "Nobody teaches [fill in any subject] anymore."

A graduate of Manchester West High School's Class of 1941, Rita worked as a bookkeeper for Manchester Dyeing and Finishing Co. (later known as MKM Knitting) in the Millyard in Manchester until, to her mother's dismay, she married Roland A. Lambert in 1949. She lived with Roland, his father, and his aunt on the East Side of Manchester. Roland and their seven children were all Manchester Central High School graduates, an unfortunate burden Rita carried with dignity, while never missing an opportunity to point out the occasions when West bested Central.

Their romance began when Roland, whose mother was friends with Rita's mother, was tasked with teaching her how to drive. While she never much enjoyed driving, he turned out okay, and the marriage thrived until Roland's passing in 2008. Almost every evening of their 59-year marriage was spent beside each other watching TV and reading the Union Leader, with Roland occasionally lobbing a dirty sock at her while she resolutely ignored his antics.

In 1965, they purchased Kalamazoo Oil Company and renamed it Lambert Oil. For the next ten years, Rita ran the business's in-home office while herding and feeding the horde of children that passed through the house, at least some of them being her own. A multitasking working woman before her time, she would later say that she didn't understand how her daughters became feminists.

Rita and Roland sold Lambert Oil to City Fuel in 1975. They continued to work for City Fuel and retired together in 1986 when they moved to their camp on Northwood Lake in Epsom. In their retirement, they made new friends in yoga and dance classes. To the surprise of their children, they performed ballroom and line dances publicly throughout the region with the Concord YMCA Senior Dancers. Their most notable performance was as California raisins dancing to "I Heard It Through the Grapevine."

While she loved watching Jeopardy and British murder mysteries, knitting, playing dominoes, and being with her family (in that order), Rita's true passion was Book Worm, a computer word search game that challenged even her legendary self-discipline. She devised a system of putting on a kitchen timer to curb her addiction, but then would confess, with a hint of prideful rebellion, that she didn't always stop when the timer went off. "Don't you think that's sick?" Husband of 59 years would ask with a twinkle. Faced with an incorrigible husband and a gaggle of children, she conveniently heard nothing.

Rita would shamefully tell you that her bedroom closet, with clothes neatly separated by type and season, was "such a mess." Perhaps it was the yarn collection she had squirreled away in the closet (organized in a shoe caddy and Tupperware tub, of course) that merited the "mess" designation. Hoarding skeins of yarn was one of her few self-indulgences, along with daily lunches out and a half square of dark chocolate and one cookie per day. She was a woman who loved to eat and did not suffer hunger easily; as Roland would readily tell you, "She's mean when she's hungry."

If you are still reading this obituary and did not know her, then you are of her people. Rita had an intense interest in people and a passion for obituaries, often identifying obscure connections to someone who she or one of her kids had contact with many decades before. In her retirement, she became a genealogist, but learning that one branch of the family allegedly went back to Charlemagne did not impress her one bit focused as she was on finding the birth certificate of some distant relative.

An avid Facebook user up until the final weeks of her life, she would read posts every day and then ask, "Why do people post this stuff?"

A tremendous source of information, both trivial and practical, Rita embodied Google before anyone had heard of it. When her children asked her a question, she always replied, "Look it up!" She kept an almanac, atlas, dictionary, and medical reference by her chair, just in case she needed to look it up. She seamlessly transitioned to Google in her eighties when technology finally fulfilled her dream of having all information at her fingertips. The loss of her internet connection constituted an emergency.

Rita was the kind of woman who kept a hook in her handbag to hang it from a restaurant table. She knew all the waitresses at her favorite restaurants and always asked after their children and grandchildren. She sent birthday, get well, and sympathy cards to almost everyone in her acquaintance and never missed a chance to support a bake sale, raffle, or other good cause. When she died, she was proud to still have her own teeth, although her knees were of suspicious origins.

Rita was predeceased by her husband, as well as her son Robert and brother Robert, both of whom died as infants, her son-in-law F. Mike Carden, her cousins Doris (Quinter) Curran and Arthur Quinter, and her lifelong friend Ruthie Linehan. She will be missed by her remaining children and their spouses and children including Donna Lambert and Dan Schmiech of Benton, KY; Janet and Richard Dumas of Raleigh, NC; Carol Lambert of Epsom, NH; Peter and Lindalee Lambert of Alton Bay, NH; Linda Lambert of Montpelier, VT; David and Ivy Lambert of Lisbon, NH; and Nancy Lambert and Martin Lee of Durham, NH; as well as her grandchildren Zachary Dumas, Matthew Dumas, Benjamin Lambert, Sydney Lambert and Joseph Lambert, her chosen grandchild Jessica Boulanger, and her three great-grandchildren Miriam, Avalyn, and C. Felix Lambert.

A celebration of Rita's life will be held in the spring. Rita said that she would be grateful for donations to Special Olympics or the Epsom Food Pantry in lieu of flowers. The family also thanks the nurses at Granite VNA. Assisting the family with arrangements is The Roan Family Funeral Home – Still Oaks Chapel of Epsom. To share a memory or offer a condolence, please visit www.roanfamilyfuneral.com.