Amparo Ketcham, born Maria Amparo Guerrero Ramos on July 9, 1911, died in her sleep as she wished on August 5, 2016. The Spitfire of Guadalajara was full of energy and color for 105 incredible years. Her life began in Mexico City before she moved to California, where she became enraptured with Mexican and Spanish dance and mastered the castanets.
With delightful and endearing impatience, she kept her late husband, Charles Foster Ketcham, passionately in love and moving faster than he ever would have alone. Amparo loved margaritas, dancing, her children (Charles and Edward), grandchildren (Carla, Ian, Alexander, Benjamin, and Jason), and great-grandchildren (Travis, Sam, Audrey, Julian, and Caitlin), all with equal fervor. She said that the most important thing in your life is to have something that makes you happy-and if you don't have that thing, you should change your life. And don't worry about the things you can't change.
Amparo lived a life full of travel, adventure, and discovery. She loved the ocean, and spent her 90th birthday on a boat out at sea, dancing and playing castanets for her friends and family. At 95, when her doctors told her she would soon be too weak to travel, she proved them wrong and flew solo to Russia, to practice the language she'd been studying for years. At 105, she was delighted to fly one last time, when she left her home in San Diego, CA to start a new adventure in Ithaca, NY.
Some of her is in the Pacific Ocean, some is mixed with pepper in an old Mexican vial, and the rest is in a box ready to scatter wherever her many descendants take her. Most of all, this hell-of-a-woman is in all of us.
Here's to a long, amazing, and fully-lived life! You're an inspiration. We celebrate you, and we miss you.
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