As printed in The Oregonian (written by Erica Ritter)

Despite her parents’ indecision about her name, “Baby Girl McCaffery” grew up to be one fine woman. She was born April 19, 1925, in Stanley, Wisconsin, and was christened Enid Anne Marie McCaffery.

On the family dairy farm, little Enid absorbed her father Bill’s love of wildlife and poetry, and her mother Estelle’s pragmatism, Catholic faith, and love of music. She followed her sisters to school, and her brothers up trees. In spite of being “sickly” (hay fever), she did her share of the work. Classmates teased little “Enie” after she collapsed one haying season, and her father hired two grown men to replace her.

While home sick, Enid began a lifelong friendship with Ray Ritter. Mrs. McCaffery set Enid to practice writing letters to her brothers’ friend Ray, then serving in the Navy. Later, war work threw Ray and Enid together again in Portland’s shipyards. Enid said welding “was the easiest work I ever did, for the most money,” yet when they laid women off at the end of the war, “it was nice to wear dresses again.” Friendship became courtship, and Enid and Ray were married in 1946 during a visit home to Wisconsin.

Ray worked as a foreman on hydroelectric plants, so the family traveled. Enid raised four children in 27 different homes. She considered it a great education, visiting geographic wonders along the way. She and Ray helped their little scholars put themselves through college, and all their children earned advanced degrees at Stanford and Berkely.

In 1975, Ray and Enid moved back to their little house in Portland, Oregon. They joined St Charles Borromeo Parish. After Ray’s death in 1992, Enid continued to look after their expanding family. Between sewing projects for church, children, and grandchildren, she wrote enough short stories to publish a book, "Another Side of the Thirties." She watched her saplings become towering trees, and her home became the “cottage in the woods” she had imagined as a girl. After years of cancer, Enid made one last visit to Wisconsin in spring 2007. She died peacefully in her own bed on December 4, 2007, after a final visit from each child and a last taste of praline pecan ice cream.

Enid is missed by sons Philip, Paul, and Russ Ritter; daughter Ardath Brandley, and sisters Florence Horn and Lenore Rommer; nine grandchildren, four great-grandchildren; and innumerable loving friends, relations, and neighbors. Thank you, Enid, for your faith, love, warm humor, bright wit, tact, wisdom, and ability to make the best of any situation. We will miss you, and Heaven is lucky to have you.


Funeral service Friday Dec 14, 11:00 AM.