Fairdale community celebrates life of Jackie Klosa

KIRKLAND – The Kirkland Community Fire Department fell silent Saturday as Marcy Richardson played the last voicemail she received from her sister-in-law and dear friend, Jackie Klosa.

Klosa, 69, was killed in the EF4 tornado that swept through Fairdale and the surrounding area April 9. Family and friends gathered Saturday at the Kirkland Community Fire Department to celebrate Klosa’s life.

“... I just wanted to let you know I’m driving myself this morning ...” Klosa said on the voicemail.

A stroke left Klosa without a driver’s license for some time, but when it was finally reissued, the woman, who prided herself in her independence, no longer needed to rely on neighbors and friends for rides.

“The last weekend she was over, I’d be doing dishes and she’d tap me on the shoulder and stick it out to show me,” Klosa’s sister, Billie Schnorenberg said.

Klosa’s family laid the long-time Fairdale resident to rest next to her husband Aug 19, at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia. Although the experience was therapeutic for those who knew Klosa best, an outcry from the community sparked Saturday’s memorial, her daughter, Donna Peek, said.

“I’ve heard from the community that they were wondering when we were going to have something up here for mom,” she said. “They were needing closure.”

Klosa was found in the bathroom of her home after the tornado leveled most of the unincorporated community. She had battled lung cancer, but was cancer-free when she died, Schnorenberg said.

“I was the last one to talk to her the night of the tornado,” Schnorenberg said. “[I said] that she needed to go to the basement, and I knew she wouldn’t. It really wouldn’t have made any difference, but we didn’t know that at the time – she was deathly afraid of spiders. She said, ‘They’ll find me in the bathtub with my purse and my cellphone.’ And that’s where they found her.”

Klosa was a retired Quality Control inspector from G.I.C. for more than 20 years and survived by her daughters, Peek, and Yvette DeWispelaere; Schnorenberg, her sister, and many more extended family and long-time friends.

After beating a terminal lung-cancer diagnoses, things were looking up for Klosa, neighbor and family-friend Geri Hopper said.

“She’d come over for coffee. She’d never stay long. Maybe 10 to 15 minutes and she was off. She was so excited to be cancer free,” Hopper said. “The kind of cancer that she had was the same kind that my mother did.”

Of the 17 homes ravaged by the tornado, the one intended for Hopper’s mother and one of Klosa’s best friends, Irene Clay, was the first to be rebuilt.

Clay’s condition had worsened in the meantime, and she died the day after the house arrived.

“It really bothered Mother a lot, even though she was fighting her own battle at the time, when this happened to [Jackie.]. It was so unnecessary,” Hopper said. “Maybe it would have happened anyway, but we’ll never know.”

Mother’s Day will never be the same, and no matter how much time passes, Peek, Klosa’s youngest daughter, will always need her mother, she said.

“I am thankful that she doesn’t have to live through the aftermath,” Peek said. “... It has to be very tough for the community. Those who remain there. Those who have to rebuild. Those who have had to find housing and everything elsewhere.”