A Celebration of Holger's Life
Holger Fuhrmann passed away peacefully with family by his side in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, from an illness that he had been fighting with great courage for a number of months. He is survived by his wife Barbara, her family, their daughter and her family, and all four of his brothers and one sister and their families in the United States and in Germany.
Holger was born in the countryside of Northern Germany in the State of Schleswig Holstein while WW2 was still raging. He passed his Abitur at Bismarckschule Gymnasium in Elmshorn, Germany, and went on to the University of Hamburg where he studied education and earned his teaching degree, but not before serving two years of obligatory military service in the Bundeswehr.
Holger was a passionate fencer, as was his mother and all his brothers and several sisters-in-law. At Moss Lake Camp, in Eagle Bay, New York, he and his brothers taught fencing for all the seasons from 1962 through 1971.
Not long after Holger started his full time teaching career as a physics teacher in Hamburg, he took a vacation trip to the US during which time he visited one of his brothers and his wife in Florida. While there, on one fateful day, his sister-in-law, who had just given birth, introduced him to a beautiful young nurse named Barbara. All else is easy to imagine. They fell in love, made plans for the rest of their lives together and happily carried out those plans. They were married in Florida, lived in Hamburg, Germany, pursued their professional careers until Holger’s retirement from teaching. They returned to Florida following their daughter Lorraine, who was already attending university there, and set up their new home in America.
Holger started enjoying life as a pensioner, but Barbara kept busy with her full-time job as a Senior Registered Nurse at the same hospital where she first met Holger. They fulfilled their dreams of travelling to far away places from Africa to Alaska and many places in between and for much more than a decade they lived their lives to the fullest, even taking up formal ballroom dancing. It was not until recently that Holger was befallen with an illness that doctors were fighting to overcome, but to which he finally succumbed. He passed away on the same floor of the hospital that once was the maternity ward some 43 years earlier, the spot where he and Barbara started their lives together as one.
May Holger rest in peace and Barbara be blessed for the devotion, support and love that steered them through their wonderful life together. |
