'I feel like I have a message to give': At 91, Rose Mary Gabriel has a lot to say

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- On her 80th birthday, Rose Mary Gabriel’s children gave her an iPad and asked, “Mom, will you please write your life story? You’ve been telling us amazing stories our whole lives. We want to pass them down to our kids and grandkids!”

The now 91-year-old living in New Berlin has turned those short snippets she jotted down into four autobiographies.

“I talk too much,” Gabriel said. “But, I feel like I have a message to give.”

The mother of 9 children says she has lived in nearly a dozen states and has worked many different types of jobs. In The Quinn in Me series, she documents key memories she recalls from the chair where she knits.

“I was amazed at how much I remembered,” Gabriel said. “It’s a bunch of small stories of things I feel like I want my grandkids to know.”
She describes her lifetime of service over the course of her four books as a fifth is in the works. She explains how throughout her years, she aimed to help people raise money for various causes, including ones close to home.

“I know how to raise money,” Gabriel said. “I just have the knack. I can talk people into helping.”

Most recently, Gabriel is raising money for disabled hockey, a sport one of her many grandsons plays. She knits hats and sews blankets to support him in the activity he cares about.

Gabriel told CBS 58 all of the proceeds toward her book series will go toward disabled hockey.

Gabriel’s daughter, Cyndi Robertson, says this is just the most recent way her mother has aimed to support her family and the community around her.

“We always had classmates living with us that didn’t have a home, in high school when we didn’t have band uniforms, she’d raise money for that,” Robertson said. “We get ‘voluntold’ for projects. She says ‘I want to do this’ and I say ‘Alright let’s go’”

One organization she called ‘Kurts Krew’ was created for her grandson who was killed in action in Iraq in 2005. She handmade hats and blankets to financially aid others to play the sport he loved: sled hockey.

“It doesn’t matter who you are, how rich or poor you are, you can do something for somebody,” said Gabriel.

The 91-year-old hopes to encourage others to do something worth telling their grandchildren about.

“She was such an example for us that you can do whatever you want,” Robertson said about her mother. “If you want to achieve something, you can, you just have to make up your mind.”