Yolande Marie-Therese Welch

Yolande Marie-Therese Welch of Sanibel Island, Florida, formerly of Memphis, Tennessee, passed away peacefully on August 8, 2026, at age 99, surrounded by loved ones. She was born April 17, 1927, in Washington, D.C., and was raised in Falls Church, Virginia. Throughout her life, she loved saying, with considerable pride, “I am a Virginian.”

Yolande grew up during the Great Depression, an experience that shaped her lifelong independence, resourcefulness, and frugality. Her family had little money by modern standards.

They had electricity, but for part of her childhood they had no car, telephone, or running water. Water was pumped by hand from a well and carried into the house in buckets; as a young girl, Yolande remembered wanting to become strong enough to carry two buckets at once.

Yet she did not remember her childhood simply as one of deprivation. The family raised vegetables and fruit, and she remembered with great affection the large house, gardens, trees, fields, woods and creek surrounding their home.

Those woods helped shape two interests that would remain with her for the rest of her life: nature and reading. As a girl, Yolande would take a book into the woods and lie on a fallen tree across the creek, reading amid the birds, squirrels and sounds of the water. She later wondered whether those childhood experiences explained her lifelong love of animals, conservation and the natural world.

She had an unusually personal relationship with animals throughout her life. Family members remember her talking to them as though conversation between species were perfectly natural. When an animal she loved was nearing the end of its life, she had special words of affection and farewell for it.

Her childhood also gave her an enduring interest in the less fortunate. She remembered going into Washington with her mother and encountering a well-spoken man who had no legs and begged on the street, accompanied by a monkey. Her mother would give him money, and he would allow Yolande and the other children to play with the monkey. The lesson stuck: intelligence, dignity, and something worth learning could be found in anyone, regardless of circumstance. Kindness meant seeing the person first.

Yolande was curious, ambitious, and independent from an early age. She described herself as having an “insatiable curiosity,” always reading and wanting to know everything. When she was 13, the head operator of the local telephone company stopped her on the street and asked whether she wanted a summer job as a telephone operator. She enthusiastically accepted, obtained the required work permit, and worked throughout the summer. She loved the work and the people, although she turned down an invitation to remain rather than attend high school because she was eager to continue her education.

She attended Jefferson High School in Falls Church, a small school in an old building that once housed soldiers during the Civil War. Her graduating class numbered only 29 students. Education was taken seriously; among the expectations she remembered was substantial summer reading, including a list of 15 books. She later described those high-school years as some of the happiest of her early life.

Yolande was highly competitive, and in high school she liked baseball, which was not a girl’s sport at the time. She simply got on the field with the boys and started hitting the ball and fielding. She loved it when she hit a home run and said their jaws dropped. They stopped suggesting to Yolande that she could not play. Later in life, her competitiveness led to many $1 bets around topics of knowledge and other outcomes, which most people lost trying to compete against her.

After graduating, Yolande lived briefly with her family in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. She soon decided that she needed to return to Washington and “get on with my life.” She supported herself through several jobs while developing new skills. During one particularly lean period, after setting aside enough money for transportation to work, she remembered having only five cents left to her name until payday. She brought a peanut butter sandwich to work each day and managed.

That experience reinforced a financial philosophy she followed throughout her life: never live beyond your means.

Eventually, Yolande obtained a position with the federal government at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Electrification Administration. She loved the work and continually looked for opportunities to learn and advance. At the same time, she attended evening classes at American University and later George Washington University, where her studies included zoology and psychology. She also attended courses through the Department of Agriculture Graduate School, studying shorthand because she recognized that the additional skill could qualify her for more advanced positions.

As if full-time work and night classes were not enough, Yolande also volunteered for the American Red Cross, frequently serving as a driver. On one occasion, when the assigned driver failed to appear, she received a quick lesson in operating a bus and proceeded to drive a group to a hospital in Maryland.

During these Washington years, she met Richard Welch at Wesley Hall, where students and young workers were provided rooms and meals. Richard had come from Memphis and was working in the Senate Office Building for Senator Estes Kefauver, his first cousin. Yolande was involved with a theater group connected to the Department of Agriculture, and one of their early interactions was recruiting Richard to help sell tickets at a table in Wesley Hall. What began there developed into a loving relationship.

But when Richard remained reluctant to make a marriage commitment and prepared to return to Memphis, Yolande decided once again to “get on with my life.” She applied to the Foreign Agricultural Service, and after an extensive clearance process, a Foreign Service examination, and training at the Foreign Service Institute, she was offered an overseas assignment.

Europe had been her first choice and Africa another possibility, but the opening was in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Yolande accepted it.

Her family and friends thought she was crazy to travel so far away, but Yolande later wrote that she had always been fortunate in her ability to “bloom where I am planted.” She chose to travel to Rio aboard a passenger ship, reasoning that it might be her only opportunity to cross the ocean on a luxury liner. She loved the journey.

At the American Embassy in Rio, Yolande served as Executive Assistant to the Agricultural Attaché. She learned Portuguese, traveled around South America, participated in the Rio Players theater group, and became involved with the Union Church of Rio. She loved the work, the country, the people, and Embassy life, and made friendships that lasted for decades.

Eventually, as Yolande later put it with characteristic humor, Richard “came to his senses” and proposed by letter. Yolande, however, had committed to complete her Foreign Service assignment and had no intention of breaking her word simply because Richard had proposed. So, he followed her to Brazil and found work teaching English.

Getting married in Brazil proved extraordinarily complicated, so the couple found another solution: they arranged to marry aboard a ship in international waters. Yolande ordered her wedding dress from a New York catalog and had it shipped to Brazil. There was no fitting room, alteration appointment, or backup plan. She weighed about 110 pounds, put on the dress when it arrived—and it fit. The wedding took place on Friday the 13th during a storm. The ship rolled so badly that the wedding party took Dramamine. The minister did not and became seasick, fortunately only after completing the ceremony. It was a suitably unusual beginning to a marriage that would last more than 60 years.

Yolande and Richard eventually returned to the United States and settled in Memphis. Yolande devoted more than 20 years primarily to raising their three children, Timothy, Kathleen and Daniel.

Years later, when asked to name her greatest achievement, she answered without hesitation: having her children. She wrote that each was wanted and welcomed, that they had brought immeasurable joy into her life, and that her children had taught her “the purest kind of love.”

Education was one of the values she and Richard took most seriously. When they became dissatisfied with the public education options available to their children, they gave up plans for a larger home and instead devoted the money to private education. Timothy and Daniel attended Christian Brothers High School, and Kathleen attended St. Mary’s Episcopal School for Girls. The children loved their experiences at those schools, and Yolande remained intensely proud of their subsequent educational and professional accomplishments.

Her children also learned that membership in the Welch household came with responsibilities. Among the “Life Lessons” Yolande later wrote down were: “Family always comes first”, “Children should have chores”, “Education matters”. “Stay active and keep your mind sharp”. and “Plan the work—work the plan”.

When Yolande eventually returned to professional work, it happened in a way that became almost a pattern: people recognized what she could do, asked her to help, and kept her. While paying Kathleen’s tuition at St. Mary’s one summer, Yolande was offered what was supposed to be a temporary two-week position. It lasted nearly 13 years. She served as Secretary to the Headmaster and later worked with the Middle School principal and even taught typing. Yolande loved education and later described her years at St. Mary’s as one of the experiences that transformed her life.

When she thought she had finally retired, she received four job offers within approximately three months. She finally took one, concluding that perhaps God did not intend for her to retire yet. She joined the Memphis Botanic Garden, where her position evolved into Executive Assistant to the Director.

Her job description did not capture everything she actually did. Family members remember that on Mondays, when unusual telephone calls tended to accumulate, Yolande would sometimes take them herself to spare the woman at the front desk. One caller wanted to know which end of a daffodil bulb should point upward. Yolande was able to help.

She remained at the Botanic Garden for another decade, serving in a role that would be an operations officer in any other organization and forming lasting friendships. She never earned a large salary—family members recall that even late in her working life she earned no more than $14 an hour—but money was never the measure by which she evaluated useful work. Yolande finally retired at age 75.

Books, learning, music, nature and ideas remained constant throughout her life. She belonged to horticultural organizations, Friends of the Library and the Columbine Book Club. She loved classical music and believed that a day without music was much like a day without sunshine.

Reading, however, may have been her greatest lifelong intellectual pleasure. She once wrote that learning to read seemed to her “rather profound.”

In 2001, their daughter Kathleen helped Yolande and Richard find a great deal on a vacant home lot.

Yolande, always quick to capitalize on an opportunity, sold Richard on the idea, enabling them to build a home on Sanibel Island, near their daughter Kathleen and her family. Living near grandchildren as they grew up was something they had not previously experienced, and Yolande considered it a wonderful gift.

Sanibel also suited her. Its wildlife, conservation ethic, and natural beauty connected directly to the girl who had loved the woods and creek behind her Virginia childhood home. Yolande became involved with conservation and nature organizations, made friends throughout the island, and served for many years as treasurer of her homeowner’s association. She could make friends at stores, banks, community organizations and seemingly almost anywhere she went.

That ability to create and maintain relationships was not accidental. Yolande consciously worked at friendship. Long before email and text messaging, she wrote letters by hand or typewriter to people she did not want to lose. She continued writing to friends while living overseas and maintained some childhood friendships for most of her life. When asked how she had kept so many friends for so many years, her answer was essentially that she made the effort.

In 2022, Hurricane Ian dramatically changed the Sanibel chapter of her life. Yolande was 95 when the storm struck the island. During the hurricane, fierce winds threatened her house’s main door. Yolande braced against the door and used her body weight to keep it from blowing inward as the storm raged. The house survived with relatively limited structural damage, but her car and belongings stored on the lower level were flooded. During the evacuation from Sanibel, she also suffered a serious leg injury requiring 27 stitches. She did a short stint recuperating with Tim and Cyndi in Pennsylvania, who fondly recall the great impression she left on all the doctors, nurses, and friends she met there.

She ultimately could not return to living independently in her Sanibel home and moved to American House in Fort Myers.

At an age when many people might have withdrawn from the world, Yolande simply built another life. She made friends with residents and employees, participated actively in community life, and volunteered in memory care, spending time helping residents who were experiencing cognitive difficulties. She remained vigilant about her own finances, continued serving as HOA treasurer until late in life, handled her email on her personal computer, and kept up with current events.

Her command of technology became another remarkable feature of her later years. At 99, Yolande was still using her Windows computer independently and joining scheduled Zoom meetings for her book club. More impressive than navigating Zoom itself was what she did once she logged in: she continued reading the books, thinking about them, and contributing thoughtful observations to the discussion.

This mattered deeply to Yolande. Family members remember that she prayed every night. First, she prayed for her family. Then she prayed that God would allow her to keep a working mind. That prayer was answered for all of her 99 years.

Yolande was thoughtful, witty, outspoken, curious, analytical and deeply interested in ideas. She also knew herself well enough to see her own contradictions. In her memoir she called herself a self-starter, resourceful, competitive and blessed with an inquiring mind. She admitted that she could be impatient, sensitive and possessed of a constant sense of urgency. “I like to do things my way,” she wrote, “but will accept the consequences.”

That belief in personal responsibility ran throughout her thinking. She wrote that life was a matter of choices and that choices came with accepting their consequences. A moral compass, she observed, could point someone in the right direction but the person still had to choose whether to go there.

She was equally serious about integrity. In later years she wrote candidly that she had made mistakes, said things she regretted and sometimes wished she had acted differently. She thought of life as a journey toward insight rather than as a record of perfection.

Yolande loved memorable sayings, poems and observations that condensed larger truths into a few words. She copied them onto scraps of paper and saved many of them through moves and even through Hurricane Ian. One small note eventually rested on a shelf directly above the computer she used every day. On it were three simple instructions:
Think deeply.
Live honorably.
Lead boldly.

Those words seem particularly appropriate for Yolande because they were more than an inspirational saying. In many respects, they describe how she lived.

Her faith also remained important. One of her favorite passages of Scripture was the blessing from Numbers 6:24–26, which she read at weddings and other important family occasions. When she was unable to attend one of her granddaughter’s weddings,the blessing was read on her behalf:

“May the Lord bless you and keep you; May the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you;
May the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.” Perhaps no better words express what Yolande wished for the family and friends she loved throughout her long life.

Yolande was preceded in death by her husband, Richard Welch. She is survived by her three children, Timothy Welch (Cyndi) of Furlong, PA, Kathleen Campbell (John) of Sanibel, FL, and Daniel Welch (Nancy) of New Canaan, CT. She is also survived by eight grandchildren: David (Kelly), Gabrielle (Michael), Sophia, Allison, Rachel (Hassan), Thomas, Joshua, and Carolina; and two great-grandchildren, Hayden and Bailey.

Toward the beginning of the memoir she left behind, Yolande explained why she was recording so many memories. She worried that families too easily lose knowledge of the people and experiences that came before them. She wrote that passing memories from one generation to another forms a “gossamer bridge” binding people together.

Yolande spent 99 years building that bridge—through her children and grandchildren, through friendships maintained across decades, through letters, books and stories, through work and service, and finally through the memories she deliberately left behind.

A couple of years ago, after a memorable evening together, we were saying our goodbyes. Yolande knew she was in the more reflective period of her life and was not sure when she would be able to visit with some of us again. Yolande made a special and poignant comment before she headed off: “Honey, I have put 13 beautiful children on God’s green earth.” Amen, Mom.

A memorial Mass will be held Saturday, August 22, at 1:00 p.m. at the Church of the Resurrection of Our Lord in Fort Myers, Florida. Afterward, Yolande will be laid to rest beside Richard at Fort Myers Memorial Gardens.

A Celebration of Life will follow from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the Sanibel Community House. All who knew Yolande are invited to join the family and share their own special stories of a long and remarkable life.

The family asks that in lieu of flowers, please make a contribution in Yolande’s honor to the
following organizations:

Sanibel Captiva Conservation Foundation (SCCF), Sanibel
Clinic For the Rehabilitation of Wildlife (CROW), Sanibel
The Nature Conservancy
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Church of the Resurrection of Our Lord, Fort Myers