Hazel V. Osborne

How to celebrate the long and well-lived life of Hazel V. Osborne in a few paragraphs? Impossible, but here goes... words like kindness and generosity come immediately to mind, but so do calm and thoughtful and even mischievous, and, very, very occasionally, cantankerous. She loved listening to the music of Garland and Crosby and watching dancers like Astaire and Rogers perform. She loved flowers and hummingbirds. In her younger days, she loved playing basketball and roller skating. Aunt Hazel, or "Auntie" as she was known to many, expressed her love to those around her through hugs, through hundreds of hand-written cards, through trips to local restaurants, through visits to hospitals, through chicken and dumplings, bowls full of candy, cupboards full of cookies, and a freezer full of ice cream. Auntie's home was a welcoming island of calm and happiness for young and old, surrounded by a sea of green grass where countless picnics were held, games of tag and hide and seek were played, and dogs were free to chase frisbees far from the busy road. We, the living, thank God for her peaceful presence in our life and can only hope to follow her good example.

Born in Grayson County, Virginia, the daughter of Eugene and Minnie (Barnes) Testerman, she moved to Bel Air, Maryland in the mid-1960s and was the wife of the late Walter Guy Osborne for 46 years until his death in 1998. She passed out of this world of pain and into her heavenly reward on Sunday, December 27, 2020 at Laurel Regional Hospital in Laurel, Maryland at 92 years of age.

Hazel was a regularly attending member of Emmorton Baptist Church and retired from Edgewood Arsenal as a procurement assistant after 26 years of service. She had retained many close friends after her retirement and enjoyed four happy years toward the end of his life with her beloved companion, Berlin Blakely. Hazel is survived by her nieces Carolyn Simms, Roselyn Lodge, Sharon Hall, Opal Fleming, Kimberly Perrone, Karena Sams and Patricia Reedy from Tennessee, as well as her nephews, Eugene "Buddy", Edward "Eddy", Ronald "Ronny", and Mark Testerman, as well as Keith Harris. In addition to her parents and husband, she was preceded in death by her brother, Reeves E. Testerman and sisters, Ruth Testerman, Blanche Rutherford, Jincy Rutheford, Peggy Patrick, and Marie Weaver, and nephew Ernest Testerman.