Onda Lee (Minshall) Booker

Onda Minshall Booker, age 88, of Columbus, Ohio, passed away peacefully on October 14, 2024. She is survived by her children, Rebecca Blood, Linda Stanek, Molly Booker, and Andrew Booker; her grandchildren, Alex Stanek, Elliott Stanek, Sydonia Lary, Alice Garrett, Zach Forsberg-Lary, Victoria Forsberg-Lary, Jules Forsberg-Lary, Hayden Bryant, and Mason Bryant; and her daughter- and sons-in-law, Ken Blalock, Nikia Bryant, Dan Stanek, and Jesse Garrett. Visiting hours will be held at Egan-Ryan Northwest Chapel on Saturday, October 19th from 9:30 - 10:30 am. A memorial service will follow. Burial 9:30 am Tuesday October 22nd at Union Cemetery.

Onda was born on September 13, 1936 to Melvin and Dale Minshall in Marion, Ohio. She was an only child.

Onda was fortunate to have an extremely close relationship with both sets of grandparents, who lived close by. She fondly recalled walking to her their homes  after school, and sometimes to spend the night--a packed bag in one hand and her cat held tightly in the other.

She also had great memories of her family's cabin at Lake Erie, where she developed her love of fishing. As a young mother, she taught all of her children to fish. It was a rite of passage in the Booker family to be told one day, "From now on, you have to bait your own hook." For many years, the Bookers spent a week every summer at Pike Lake State Park, where Jim grilled lunch and dinner, and Onda spent all day in a row boat with her children, fishing.

Onda was the first in her family to go to college. Her father insisted that she prepare for a practical profession: teacher or nurse. While enrolling at the Ohio State University, her mother asked Onda what she really wanted to study. "Art," said Onda, and Dale told her "Then I'll pay for it." Onda received a B.A. in Fine Art in 1958.

While at Ohio State, Onda became a member of the Delta Zeta sorority, where she made many lifelong friends. One of them was Julie Booker, a sorority sister who introduced Onda to her brother Jim, a pre-law student. Onda and Jim were married on August 31, 1958.

She worked for a year as a commercial artist before starting her family. Just before her first baby was born, Onda designed and silk screened her own baby announcements, honoring her husband’s love of chess with the words, “Announcing a New Master.” While a young mother she painted portraits of her young daughters, and for years created themed costumes with her friends for the Columbus Museum of Art's annual Beaux Arts Ball.

But the center of her life was always her family. When her daughter complained that she couldn't read yet, Onda placed labels like “chair” and “lamp” on objects around the house. She enjoyed coloring with her pre-schoolers, and taught them how to make secondary colors—orange, green, and purple—by mixing their primary-colored crayons. When her children became teenagers, Onda even managed to tolerate four stereo systems in four bedrooms playing different songs —all at the same time.

Onda was an avid gardener, tending gardens wherever she lived. For a time she had a geodesic greenhouse, and over the years she grew a few vegetables. But her abiding love was for flowers, and she filled her yard with peonies, lilacs, roses, and Japanese iris. One of her happiest rites of Spring was a trip to Straders to buy annuals that she tucked into the gardens around her perennials and into every pot she owned.

In the late 1970s, her father went on vacation and left her to "babysit" his personal computer. She was fascinated, and soon bought a RadioShack computer of her own. She taught herself BASIC and eventually asked her college-aged daughter to buy her a book on Fortran--she wanted to do a few things BASIC couldn't do.

When her father passed, Onda brought home the genealogy materials he had worked on, and spent many happy hours inputting family trees into her computer. Following Jim's retirement, she and Jim took weekly drives throughout Ohio, often to county seats, where she would gather information for her family genealogy. Together they visited all 88 Ohio counties, and once traveled to Media, Pennsylvania to “The Minshall House,” where her immigrant ancestors had lived.

Throughout all of it, she continued to carve out time for art projects, often experimenting with techniques that were new to her. She tried her hand at silk screen printing and one year taught herself Chinese brush painting. She dabbled in crafts that interested her, eventually focusing on counted cross stitch and quilting. She always had a project planned or in process, even when she could not find the time to actually work on it.

She had an extraordinary love for all children, and for a long time the small (and then larger) children on her street would gravitate to her front porch, where she was always glad to visit with them. In fine weather, she took daily walks with her next door neighbor as long as she was able.

She maintained close relationships with each of her adult children, and she was delighted when she became a grandmother. Both she and Jim excelled at grandparenting, and even after they were grown, her grandchildren regularly called and stopped by for impromptu visits. When they did, she instantly put aside whatever she was doing and turned her full attention to them, always the center of her world.

She had difficulty walking in her later years, but would make the effort to walk slowly to her garden, to the edge of her property to chat with neighbors, or just to sit on her front porch swing.

When her family visited, Onda was always ready with a snack, to share her latest project, to point out the most recent bloom in the garden, and to listen with interest to whatever her children and grandchildren wanted to talk about. For all of us, she was the heart of the family. We will miss her.

Her funeral service will be held 10:30 a.m. Saturday October 19, 2024 at Egan-Ryan Funeral Home Northwest Chapel where friends may call 9:30 - 10:30 a.m. Burial 9:30 a.m. Tuesday at Union Cemetery.

In lieu of flowers, please consider donating to the Mid-Ohio Food Collective, P.O Box 182883, Columbus, Ohio, 43218-2883.

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