Dietz Helps Honor Others with a Homemade Touch

On Monday, March 20th, Donna Berst (nee Burkhardt) passed away at the age of eighty-four. The Palmer native and lifelong member of St. John’s Lutheran Church had been renowned, among other things, for her baking, the vast array of desserts to which she would treat her children, grandchildren, and frequent guests.

Although Berst passed on, her passion for baking remained, not only as part of the tapestry of her life woven in the recollections of those surviving her, but also in a less subtle, more material way: In the form of innumerable recipes, scrawled on index cards, discolored by age and use.

During her visitation on March 23rd, these relicts of one of Berst’s great passions would find new use as symbols emblemizing her life.

When Berst’s daughter and son-in-law, Pamela and Spencer Curry, approached Tracey Dietz, owner of the Jacobsen- Greenway- Dietz Funeral Home in St. Paul and Greenway-Dietz Funeral Home in Palmer, about providing funerary services for the late Berst, Tracey asked a question that she asks all of her clients: “Is there anything in particular you would like us to bake for the visitation?”

Answers had not been hard to come to.

“I made chocolate chip brownies, peanut butter cookies, lemon bars… cherry bars…there were so many of them,” said Judy Dietz, Tracey’s mother-inlaw and a longtime baker for the funeral home. Judy, much like Berst, has harbored a lifelong passion for baking.

Many of the recipes, noted Judy, had been inspired by Berst’s own.

“We usually just ask [families] what their favorite [baked goods] are, and then, if I have a recipe or something, I’ll make it,” she said. “But [Berst] had a full thing of recipes.”

“[Typically,] Judy will ask [families] if [the deceased] had a special kind of cookies that they liked, for the visitation; it’s pretty nice,” said Val Killinger, who works at the funeral homes.

“[Judy] does that for every family, asks if they have favorites” noted Tracey, “But [Donna] in particular had all of these different recipes. So, we asked the family which were their favorites…[and] they brought her recipe book.”

“That was fun,” said Killinger, who had helped go through Berst’s recipe box and pick out a few staples for Judy to endeavor. “It was unique.

“Chocolate-chip cookies were made, and peanut- butter cookies, and lemon meringue…On our tribute wall, one of her nieces said the lemon meringue was her favorite. ‘There will never be another lemon meringue pie like Donna’s,’ she’d said.”

The recipe cards themselves, noted Tracey, also saw use.

“We made copies [of the cards],” she said, “and we laminated some of [Berst’s] favorites and put them on the casket spray.”

“We put some [recipe cards] on the casket piece, some in the flowers,” noted Killinger.

“We try to incorporate things that fit [the deceased],” said Tracey. “We have an amazing florist who will tie [such things] in.”

Judy, said Tracey, had “always” baked for visitations, at least since Tracey and her husband Dirk’s purchase of the funeral homes in 2019.

“[Judy has] always done the baking,” Tracey said, “because [she] wouldn’t let me. I bought the premade stuff, the cookie dough, and I thought I was doing pretty good…They were homemade to me.”

“I don’t like boughten cookies or anything,” Judy noted.

Initially, work had brought the young Dietz family—Tracey and Dirk— from North Dakota down to Nebraska.

“NPPD’s what brought Dirk,” Tracey said. “We’d found an acre-age… where we live now.”

Judy had joined her son and daughterin- law in the Cornhusker State not long thereafter.

“I started with [Apfel Funeral Home in Grand Island] in 2007, and, in like 2008 or 2009, after Dirk’s dad died, [Judy] moved down.

“She stayed with us the first year, and then she found a place in Grand Island.”

During Tracey’s early years at Apfel, living south of St. Paul and commuting, often at all hours, into Grand Island for work, her mother-in-law’s presence, she said, had been a great help.

“I had a place to stay when I got called in in the middle of the night,” she noted.

When Tracey became pregnant with her and Dirk’s daughter, Scotlyn, that presence took on an importance nonpareil.

With the odd hours that directing a funeral home often requires, Judy became what both she and her daughter-in-law call a “full-time grandma.”

“When I worked at Apfel, she would watch Scotlyn so that I could be a full-time funeral director in Grand Island, and Scotlyn and I’d have homemade breakfasts every day…and we’d go home with baked goods most of the time,” said Tracey. “She’s always baked with [Scotlyn].”

After Tracey started working at the St. Paul and Palmer funeral homes in 2017, Judy continued to pick up Scotlyn from school, take care of the family’s English bulldogs, and make her assortment of desserts for a variety of occasions.

“I love every minute of it,” said Judy.

Not one to sit idle, Judy, a certified nursing assistant (CNA), had also taken up a position for a time at Matelyn Retirement Community and, later, preoccupied herself tending to the Jacobsen-Greenway-Dietz lawn and a garden on the funeral home’s grounds.

“People ask me why I make her mow the lawn,” Tracey said with a laugh, “and I’m like, ‘I don’t make her mow the lawn!’

“Last year, she went out and got a push mower. We were like, ‘What are you doing?’ And she said, ‘I want to mow the lawn.’” While Judy enjoys working outdoors, she said that baking will always be her primary pastime.

“I love to bake,” she said. “In fact, my husband and I were going to open up a bakery before he passed away. But God had other plans. He’s with him and I’m down here baking.”

And Judy bakes, Tracey noted, all the time.

“A lot of times, if she knows I’m going to have a family coming in, she’ll have a banana bread or something in the morning,” said Tracey. “I don’t know, there’s something about just the smell of home-baked goods.”

Asked if preparing the recipes for Berst’s visitation had made her nervous at all, Judy had responded in the negative, saying she is always excited to try out new recipes.

“My husband always tried to discourage me from doing it; he’d say ‘Honey, one of these times they’re not going to turn out.’ But I just love it…I guess I don’t get nervous when it comes to baking… And the families are so appreciative.”

Judy is known, both Tracey and Killinger attested, for frequently trying out new recipes on the funeral home staff.

“We love cookie-baking day, because then we get to try all the new ones,” said Killinger.

“I just love baking,” Judy concluded. “I’m just lost in my own little world.”

“I’m loving every minute of it.”

“I jus“ t love it…I guess I don’t get nervous when it comes to baking…And the families are so appreciative.”

- Judy Dietz