Hazel Mae Ham
April 23, 1925 — July 22, 2022
Hazel Mae Ham, “Dolly” to some, went home to be with Jesus on July 22, 2022.
Hazel was greeted in heaven by her mom and dad; her brothers Buddy, Leland, Melvin and Elwayne; her sisters Laina Ulbricht and Marilyn Smatlak and her daughter Karen Neale.
Hazel was born on April 23, 1925, to Jessie and Gust Ulbricht, farmers in Milton-Freewater, Oregon.
Hazel moved to Moses Lake in 1966 to work as a business clerk for the Moses Lake School District. She was a 41-year-old single mom with four children.
Her desire upon moving to Moses Lake was to purchase a home, but at that time, banks would not loan money to women without a man’s signature. That did not stop Hazel. She persisted until she found a bank that would loan her money to purchase the home she would live in for the next 56 years.
She was a woman of great strength and character. When she was told that she qualified for welfare with her meager entry salary of $200 a month, she replied, “We will live on what I make.” And she and her family did, a lesson her children would never forget.
She taught her children many other valuable lessons, but the most important one, by far, was to live to honor God and his Word.
With Hazel’s work ethic, she quickly moved up the ladder in the school administration office. She also took on a temporary evening job selling Fuller Brush to help make ends meet.
She loved to stand in her park-like back yard and whistle. Her whistle was not a common whistle, but a stunning melodious, show-stopping whistle. She was often requested to whistle hymns at church.
She was a woman of many talents. She could change the oil in her car, sew dresses for her daughters, prune her fruit trees and make award-winning pies with fruit from those trees.
She loved her children fiercely. She wrote a poem in her Bible that attests to this.
She was not only an amazing mother, but grandmother as well, who loved biking, jumping on the trampoline and running and playing with her grandchildren. In the summer, she would load the grandkids up and take them all to family church camp, a memory they still cherish.
One of her favorite things to do with the grandkids was to play dart guns. She would laugh and run as she tried to get them with a dart and the grandchildren tried to get her back. In addition to this, she taught them to play her favorite sport, baseball. She was still playing baseball with her grandchildren into her 70s, able to catch line drives to the face.
Being with grandma was always a party. She was quick to laugh and did a great job of laughing at all the grandkids’ jokes – even when the jokes didn’t make a lick of sense. Hazel liked to play the piano for her grandchildren, too. She only knew “two little ditties,” as she put it, but she played them with great enthusiasm and energy as her grandchildren would dance around the living room.
Hazel is survived by her brother Wesley Ulbricht and his wife Darlene of Moses Lake, and three of her four children: Gary Ham and his wife Kathy of Moses Lake, Gale Ham and his wife Sharon of Moses Lake, and Carolyn Rogers and her husband Don of Electric City; 14 grandchildren; 24 great-grandchildren; and two great-great-grandchildren.
Hazel lived a long, fruitful, fulfilled, happy, but sometimes difficult life. Through her struggles, she learned to turn her sorrows and worries over to God. Her desire was to live out her Christian faith. She was not perfect, but her heart was perfect. She always wanted to do what was right. She was the rock and cornerstone of her family. She was loved, respected, and cherished. She was a precious, irreplaceable person, friend, mother, and grandmother who will be so very, very greatly missed.
Memorial service to be held Thursday, Aug. 11, 2022, at 2 p.m. at Lakeview Missionary Church, 810 S. Evergreen Drive, Moses Lake, Washington. Everyone is welcome.
