August 16, 2000
Oster receives fair 'Homemaker of the Year' award
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
She cooks and she bakes, from scratch. She cans fruits and vegetables, in spades. She cleans, organizes and manages her home. And in her spare time, she creates beautiful crafts of all types.
Trish Oster of Blair Township does it all, but don't call her a Superwoman. She is a full-time homemaker who firmly believes that creating a home for her husband and children is her calling in life.
Recently, the outside world noticed what her family sees every day when Oster was crowned "Homemaker of the Year" last week at the Northwestern Michigan Fair. More than the recognition as a great cook, canner or craft maker, the award to her acknowledges her most important commitment in life: being a mother.
"To me being Homemaker of the Year means being Mom of the Year," said Oster, who has been married to her husband, Larry, for 19 years. "Because without the kids I wouldn't be doing the things I do."
While some may wonder at her 'old-fashioned' values, for Oster there is no other way to care for her family. She decided this from her own personal experience after spending years as a working mother. She ran a day care for eight years and worked at Meijer for eight years while her children were young. During that time, she saw how her house was a mess and her children unhappy and decided things had to change.
"I was in the workforce for years and I know what my family lost," Oster said. "I did go back to work when Adam, 11, was a babe but I lost out; I can't ever get that time back and it hurts."
Now a foster parent of two little ones plus children ages 11 and 17 still at home, she is determined to give her family, home and marriage full-time attention.
"Now I am busier than I ever was but it is all my family," Oster said. "If they are not happy, then I am not happy. I'm a mom through and through."
Oster believes that the art of homemaking is diminishing and finds that sad for families everywhere. During the past four years that she has attended the Northwestern Michigan Fair she has seen the number of entries in the home economics categories shrink each year.
Bucking the trend, Oster began entering her baked goods, crafts and canned items in the Northwestern Michigan Fair three years ago. That first year she brought home two first place, four second place and two third place ribbons. The second year she tried, she brought home a total of 23 ribbons and was runner-up for "Homemaker of the Year."
Oster set her sights then on winning this year's homemaker contest and set aside crafts and cans in a special basket in the basement all year. This year, she entered dried flower wreaths, sewing, crocheting, baked and canned goods, cross-stitch and a Charlie Brown Christmas tree. She pulled it all together in time for the fair despite having lightening strike her house just a week before the entry deadline, narrowly missing her and knocking out her house's pump and computer.
The abundance of Oster's entries, numbering nearly 60 in all, was the harvest of her lifelong 'can-do' attitude, she noted.
"Being a homemaker is an attitude more than an aptitude," Oster said. "If I have to do something I do it; if I need to know how to do it, I learn."
One of the reasons Oster is pleased at receiving the "Homemaker of the Year" award is that she has Multiple Sclerosis. Many days it is a struggle to find the energy to run her home.
Since her diagnosis in 1993, she has been looking at her priorities in life and decided her family needed to be first. She took what she terms a medical retirement from Meijer in 1996 and has not worked outside the home since.
"By winning this award I had to prove something to myself and I did," said Oster, who brought home 50 ribbons and rosettes for her fair entries this year. "I have to be thankful every day for getting up. Doctors told me when I was diagnosed that I would be in a wheelchair in three years and that hasn't happened."