Everyone's life has a story. In "Lives," we tell some of those stories about North Shore people who have died recently. "Lives" runs Mondays in The Salem News.
SALEM — When Jeannette Darisse needed clothes for her children, she didn't run down to the store and buy the latest fashions.
There was no Target or GapKids. World War II and 11 children meant money was tight.
Instead, she used a skill her mother taught her — Darisse not only sewed most of her children's clothes but knitted and crocheted clothing for her grandchildren, great-grandchildren and friends.
But Darisse didn't stop there. Her talents went far beyond the needle and thread when she developed what would become her true passion: decorative rug hooking.
"Being home alone and being poor, you got to get creative and resourceful, and that's how you become an artist," Darisse's son Thomas of Middleton said.
Five years ago, Darisse reached a point where she kept losing her balance and having falls, Thomas Darisse and her daughter Michelle Girard said. She entered Blueberry Hill Nursing Home in Beverly and did well, but her condition began to go down hill a year ago.
Jeannette Darisse died Aug. 13 at 91 years old.
Born Sept. 21, 1918, she was a lifelong Salem resident.
She was 17 years old when she married her late husband, Joseph. Her frugality was a necessity as a young mother.
While sewing her children's clothes, she saved money by using paper shopping bags to cut out the patterns.
In the late 1930s, she had two young children, and she lost her third child at 6 months old. She began working at Atwood & Morrill Co. in Salem.
She amazed her supervisor at how quickly she learned to read blueprints as a lathe operator and was always "dead-on" with the pieces she made, Girard said.
"She took great pride in how precise her work was and how she could make these accurate pieces faster than the men," Girard said.
As more children arrived, Jeannette became a mother full time again and sewed, knitted and crocheted more often.
She also developed her skills in hooking rugs.
The process involved dying pieces of torn wool. Thomas Darisse remembers coming home from school to find pots on the stove with wool pieces in dye.
Many of her rugs, including a patriotic one of the American bald eagle, were submitted to the Topsfield Fair. She collected numerous ribbons over the years.
"She wasn't in it so much for the ribbons but for the craft and enjoyment of it," Thomas said.
In the early 1970s, when the kids were grown, she returned to work at Salem Bridal Shoppe on Washington Street, in the back of the Masonic Temple. She later went to work for a company that made sports uniforms where she sewed, among other clothing, the New England Patriots uniforms.
Darisse's skills meant she always had an eye out for quality products. She wouldn't tolerate anything else. When Thomas Darisse, 59, bought a flannel shirt at a downtown clothing store when he was young, his mother looked it over and wasn't pleased.
The pattern on the front pocket didn't match the shirt, and the buttons were not sewn on right.
"This is trash! Bring it back," Darisse recalled his mother telling him. And he did.
Conversely, when she saw a fishermen knit sweater that he paid $35 for a short time later, she was upset at first. But after taking a closer look at the quality of the stitching and the yarn, she changed her mind.
"Well, it will last you a long time," she told him.
Darisse's husband worked at GE at Riverworks, and there were bad years and there were lean years, Thomas Darisse recalled.
When his mother wanted a harvest table, a simple dining table with leaves on each side, she signed up to take a woodworking class at Salem High School.
"My mother said it was basically like cutting patterns," Thomas Darisse said. "It was a simple-looking table but finely crafted."
As her years grew and her health diminished, Darisse didn't sew, knit, crochet or hook rugs as often.
After some nudging by her son, she told him she spent her life creating works that were eights and nines on a scale of one to 10.
"Doing something that was a two or three was no pleasure," she told her son.
"It was a gradual process as she got older. Her eyesight and arthritis," Thomas Darisse said. "But she always appreciated something that was well-made."
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