Wiltrud Luderer

Wiltrud Luderer, 17 November 1935 – 1 February 2024

Wiltrud Elisabeth Frida Luderer (née Bethge), 88, died on February 1 in Irvine, California after a long period of declining health due to Alzheimer disease with her two daughters at her side. Wiltrud was born in Lehre, Germany in 1935. Her father, Wilhelm Bethge was a farmer and mayor of the village, who was killed in Kaluga in Russia in 1943, when Wiltrud was only 7 years old. Her mother, Marie (known as Micki by family and friends) managed to hold on to their small farm, work off its debts and raise her two daughters, Wiltrud, and her younger sister Marianne. Wiltrud excelled in school and was convinced by one of her teachers to take an entrance exam for a new girls’ boarding school, the Niedersächisches Internats Gymnasium (NIG). When she was accepted on scholarship, Micki was unhappy because she wanted Wiltrud to stay and help her on the farm, but Wiltrud’s teacher convinced her that this was an opportunity for Wiltrud, who was 13 at the time. Wiltrud always said that this teacher changed the trajectory of her whole life. Because her family had very little money, Wiltrud worked during every vacation for one of the neighboring farmers to help her mother, and she decided to drop out before completing high school, which was one of her life’s big regrets (she later earned her GED in the US and took numerous college courses). She wanted to travel and spent a year in Paris as an au pair in 1955. There, as in the NIG, she made lifelong friends and had many wonderful experiences, like seeing Louis Armstrong play and waiting outside the club afterwards to ask for his autograph. She returned to Germany and met Gottfried Luderer, who was working on his PhD in the new field of computer science. Gottfried was sad to learn that she had agreed to return to Paris to her au pair family to take care of their two children for another year. He hitchhiked to France twice to visit her during that year. They married in 1960, and their daughter Ulrike was born in 1961 and daughter Kathrin in 1963.

   In 1965, Gottfried accepted a position at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, and the young family moved, living first in Morristown for five years and later in Mendham until 1983, when Gottfried was promoted, and they moved to Naperville, Illinois. During their time in New Jersey, she learned and later taught yoga and studied fine dressmaking at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. After Gottfried took early retirement at Bell Labs, they moved to the Phoenix area, where Gottfried was a professor at Arizona State University. After each of these moves, Wiltrud created a beautiful new home for them, painting, refinishing furniture, sewing curtains and most of her own and many of her daughters’ clothes. She was also an accomplished cook, which she attributed to her time in Paris, and loved to entertain. She was an outgoing, warm, kind person, and loyal friend. Gardening was one of her joys - she created beautiful flower gardens appropriate for the climates in each of the places she lived, even becoming an expert in Sonoran Desert plants and filling her garden in Arizona with these native plants. The highlight of her later years was the year she spent in Jackson, Wyoming helping to care for her baby grandson Driscoll. Wiltrud and Gottfried moved to Irvine in 2007 to be near their daughter Ulrike and kept up a busy travel schedule for several years until Wiltrud was no longer able to due to her illness. She is survived by her husband Gottfried, daughters Ulrike Luderer (Kevin Olson) and Kathrin Luderer (Joseph Larrow), grandson Driscoll Luderer Larrow, sister Marianne Könnecker, niece Gaby Könnecker, her daughter Isa, and nephew Lutz Könnecker and his children Kristine and Frederik. Those who wish to honor Wiltrud's life with a contribution might consider the Alzheimer's Association at: https://www.alz.org/