Mabel Memorial & Martha Ramirez's Retirement

Greetings, friends of Martha and Mabel. This is Tom, Mabel’s husband, and I’m reaching out for your help.

As you know, Martha’s daughter, Mabel, passed away on August 13, 2022, from her meningioma brain tumor. Martha turned 70 years old this April and had been looking forward to retirement. However, much has changed for Martha recently. As a loving, dedicated, and caring mother, Martha made selfless economic and lifestyle sacrifices as she supported Mabel for years. Until Mabel’s health took a turn for the worse late last year, Martha had planned to continue living with us in Alexandria and splitting her time between here and Medellin. However, with Mabel’s passing, there is not much keeping Martha here in the US other than economics. All of her ten siblings still live in Medellin, and Martha owns a small apartment in Medellin within walking distance of most of her family. This is where Martha belongs in her retirement.

This fundraiser has two goals: to allow Martha to retire with her family in Colombia and to memorialize her daughter, Mabel, by supporting her mother’s retirement years.

Martha has a very small Social Security retirement for her ten years of work in the US; and although this is enough to cover her daily expenses in Colombia – food, utilities, transportation, etc. – she still has a mortgage for 115,000,000 pesos (about $26,000 USD) on her apartment in Medellin. Her Social Security check is not large enough to also cover her mortgage payment. Currently, she plans to stay in the US and work for another year or two to earn enough to pay off her mortgage and retire.

I think Martha’s former employers will agree that Martha was an important part of their families’ lives and played a critical role in their households. Most of us have typical American-style retirement benefits, such as employer-matched 401k plans and possibly even pensions. Despite being extremely frugal, Martha has never had access to these kinds of retirement benefits and is still working hard to this day at age 70, and she needs our help and generosity.

So, my request to her former employers is to contribute toward this fund to be used to pay off her mortgage in Medellin. Your generosity will enable Martha to retire with her family and to be secure in her ability to live in retirement. I would like to suggest 5-10% of the total amount you paid her over the years she was in your service. I know this is a significant amount of money, but together we can enable Martha to enjoy her senior years after more than 50 years of hard work and honor the important work she did for your families.

Friends of Mabel, we all know what an extraordinary person Mabel was. We also know her abiding love for her mother. Although I and several others promised to look after Martha after Mabel's passing, at the end, she still worried most about her mother. One meaningful thing we can do to honor Mabel is to help care for her mother, who did so much in support of Mabel over the years. My request to Mabel’s friends is that you donate generously to Martha so that she can live in peace with her family in Medellin, as Mabel would have wanted.

I hope that together we can meet this goal of paying off Martha’s mortgage. If we exceed the goal, you know that Martha is extraordinarily frugal and will stretch any additional dollars in her savings account to maintain her modest lifestyle.

Many thanks, and if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me directly.

With love,

Tom