Waldtraut Czopenko
1920 – 2010
FEEDING HILLS, Mass. — Waldtraut “Trautchen” Czopenko, 89, died in Jesus on Monday, Feb. 15, in Baystate Medical Center.
She was born in Berlin, Germany, daughter of the late Reinhold and Margarete(Dittmar) von Barschikowski. After completing her education and before starting her family, she was a nanny.
In 1950, through Providential intervention, she and her family emigrated to the United States. She lived in Brooklyn and Queens, N.Y., for 31 years before moving to Claverack, N.Y.
In 1995, she came to live with her daughter, Gabriele in Feeding Hills, Mass. During her lifetime, she was a homemaker and seamstress. She had a passion to share the love of Jesus and her life was about ministry: hospitality, looking after the elderly and sending cards and letters to anyone she could think of.
She was a lifelong Seventh-Day Adventist and a member of the First Springfield Seventh-day Adventist Church. She was the widow of Gregor Czopenko, who died in 1998.
She leaves two daughters, Gabriele C. Moore and her husband, Donald, of Feeding Hills, Mass., and Evelyn I. Rivera of Andover; seven grandchildren, Christine Moore and her companion, Robert Peterson, Carolyn Gifford and her husband, Randall, Cathleen Currie and her husband, Jeffrey, Sonia Rivera and her husband, Chris Lamphere, Gordon Moore and his wife, Karissa, Timothy Rivera and Heidi Rivera; 10 great-grandchildren; as well as nieces and nephews in Germany.
She was predeceased by her brother, Reinhold in the 1980s; and her son, Michael in 2008.