“Der Tod ist das Tor zum Licht, am Ende eines langen Weges.” (nach Franz von Asisi)Death is the door into light, at the end of a long road.

On November 26, 2024, Ulrike Dames Thomas, known to most of us as Ulla, passed away peacefully at Mount Carmel East Hospital in Columbus, following a heart attack the week before. She was preceded in death by her husband of 50+ years, Wilson Edward Thomas and leaves behind their sons Petersen and Danny, daughters Susan and Anne, two grandchildren, Courtland and Chase Kelly, great-grandson, Forest, and two brothers, Juergen and Paulke Dames, with their families in Germany.

Ulla was born as Ulrike Dames in 1936 and grew up in the old merchant city of Spandau near Berlin, Germany, where her childhood was shaped by the war years. After the war, she lived in a 2-bedroom apartment with her parents and two younger brothers. Outside of these tight quarters, she forged lasting friendships among a group of girl scouts, young women who ventured on excursions into the countryside, guitar and songs at the ready, and would remain connected for life and across continents. As an avid reader and lover of books, Ulla left the Lily-Braun-Schule and became an apprentice at a bookstore downtown.

Spandau proved to be too small for Ulla’s adventurous spirit, so in 1955, she came to the US as a nanny, living with two families in New Jersey and Maine. Enchanted with the opportunities on this side of the pond, she returned a few years later to take extension classes at Harvard University in Boston while working as a waitress. Through her friend from New Jersey, Sally, she got to know Sally’s tall older brother, Ed Thomas, who would become her lifelong partner. She took him to Spandau to meet her family and old friends, and they celebrated their wedding at the old gothic Nikolaikirche, in 1961.

As a young couple, Ed and Ulla settled in Pittsburgh and had their first two children, Peter and Susan. After moving to Lakewood, OH, on the west side of Cleveland, Ed and Ulla adopted two children [Peggy] Anne and Danny.

While Ed was on the road as a salesman, Ulla’s years in Cleveland were filled with rearing the four children, but also with outings to the Metropolitan Opera, still touring the country at that time. She was joined in her love of opera by Ed, both still discussing plots and singing tunes to each other in their farm kitchen decades later.

Their next big adventure took them from the suburban and city life of Cleveland to an old farmhouse surrounded by fields and meadows in central Ohio, outside of the small town of Baltimore. Raised by a mom, who grew up as a farm girl, Ulla embraced her new life with gusto. While sheep and horses roamed outside, bearing lambs in midwinter in the barns (and sometimes in the living room), and teenagers rode horseback across the fields, she transformed the large 1860s house into her country estate, including the “Berliner Salon” with a wall of antique German books, paintings, a baby grand piano, and sherry at the ready on the glass coffee table.

In nearby Columbus, she had an antique shop and joined the Maennerchor, the city’s club just south of the revitalizing German village. Music so often at the center of her activities, she sang in the Damenchor, and went on choir tours to Germany. At the local Baltimore high school, she helped with costumes for the yearly musicals.

During these years, she opened her house to many children, such as Rhonda, a high school kid in Baltimore who needed a home, Kristina, daughter of her girl scout friend, and Dan West, who lived on a nearby farm.

At the same time, she tried to find the best possible treatment for Ed, who had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s.

Eventually, there were fewer children and farm animals, and Ulla went from sheep to art when she became a docent at the Columbus Art Museum, where she guided tours for many years.

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