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Thursday, May 08, 2003
'She was just a real joy to be around'
Nuclear physicist, mom, pet store owner and seamstress, Eunice Fichten did it all

She died of bile duct cancer Sunday, a year after she was diagnosed with the disease.

By SHAWNA MORRISON
THE ROANOKE TIMES

   If it was interesting, Eunice Fichten wanted to do it.

    She worked with uranium as a nuclear physicist and sold birds and monkeys as the owner of an exotic pet store. She volunteered as a seamstress for Roanoke County's Explore Park and the Crisis Pregnancy Center of Roanoke. In her 70s, she enrolled in water aerobics and took Elder Scholars classes at Hollins University.

    "She was always looking for something interesting to fill her time," said Dawn Campbell of Troutville, Fichten's close friend.

    Fichten died of bile duct cancer Sunday, almost a month after Good Samaritan Hospice threw a party for her 79th birthday at her Friendship Manor apartment, and a year after she was diagnosed with the disease.

    As a physicist at Hanford Nuclear Power Plant in Washington state, a young Fichten worked with uranium before scientists realized the material was not safe to handle.

    Fichten's husband, Jim, also a physicist, was diagnosed with cancer just two months before his wife, Campbell said. Family and friends speculated that the cancer may have been caused by materials they were exposed to in the plant. Jim Fichten died July 29.

    When the couple was still living in Washington, they opened an exotic pet store. It was a great place for their two sons to learn about business, animals and life, Campbell said, but Eunice Fichten soon decided she wanted to spend as much time with her sons as possible.

    Fichten became a stay-at-home mom, but even chasing after Mark and Jeffrey didn't keep her busy enough. She took classes, including a sewing class that she enjoyed.

    When Jim and Eunice Fichten moved to Roanoke in 1996, those sewing skills came in handy. The couple had spent 12 years traveling across the country in an Airstream trailer after their retirement and Eunice Fichten needed something to do in her spare time.

    She had visited Roanoke County's Explore Park and was so impressed with it that she wanted to help, Campbell said. She called a park official and volunteered to help sew period costumes. She then showed up at a meeting of the Embroidery Guild, which she promptly joined, and found three other volunteers, including Arla Jeanne Hilgert, to help sew the costumes.

    One day a week, the four women would get together and spend the entire day sewing.

    "And laughing," Hilgert said. "We talked all the time and half the time we were laughing.

    "Eunice was one of the most fun people I've ever met," Hilgert said. "She was just a real joy to be around."

    Fichten sewed for Explore Park for three years, Campbell said. "To her it felt like being a part of history."

    One summer, she also sewed for the Crisis Pregnancy Center in Roanoke. Like Explore Park, she had gone on a tour of the place and was impressed.

    "She just saw the need there and wanted to pitch in and help," Campbell said, so she made summer maternity clothes. "She would call me and say 'I finished three pairs of shorts this morning.' She was just the most amazing person."

    Because chemotherapy had forced Fichten to miss her 60th high school reunion in South Dakota, she packed her bags and headed West last October to visit her high school friends.

    "She had such an enthusiastic approach to life," Campbell said. "I don't think I'll ever meet anyone else like her."