BRANDON - Shellcrafters was a humble Sun City Center hobbyist club when Violet Okonn Thelen took over as president.
Nine years later, seashell bonsai trees were making money for migrants in need.
Mrs. Thelen, a celebrated member of the Sun City Center community and the mother of Tampa Tribune publisher and president Gilbert Thelen Jr., died Saturday (Jan. 15, 2005) of congestive heart failure and related illnesses. She was 96.
"She was never one at the back of the parade," said Gilbert Thelen Jr.
"Her vigorous engagement in life is something she never lost."
Born in Chicago, Mrs. Thelen attended Northwestern University. In the 1930s, she married her husband, the late Gilbert Carl Thelen, and worked as a legal secretary until the birth of two sons. She moved to Sun City Center in 1975 after living in Milwaukee and Richmond and wherever the Navy took them.
In Richmond, she had operated a high-end gift shop that sold home accessories and various imports. She was creative and had an eye for what would sell, said son Neil Thelen of Atlanta.
"One year, she and Dad went on a buying trip to Hong Kong and China and they went into these little factories and she got these beautiful lacquered vases for the shop," he said. "That's just the spitfire she was, just going into these factories in the boondocks."
In Sun City Center, the crafts club helped center her life, her family said.
"She'd refer to it as her passion, as her job in Sun City Center," said Gilbert Thelen Jr.
"They raised ten of thousands of dollars for local charities like Emergency Squad, the Rotary Club's polio campaign and the migrant workers in Wimauma."
Mrs. Thelen was a member and former deacon at the United Community Church.
In addition to her sons, she is survived by seven grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren and three nieces and nephews.
A memorial service is planned for 11 a.m. Feb. 19 at Lewers Funeral Home in Ruskin.
