Rozan Holt Kuenz

Rozan Holt Kuenz passed away during the early evening of January 25, 2024, after a short stay at AdventHealth Hospice in Orlando, Florida. She was 85. Rozan was born on May 29, 1938, in Mt. Vernon, Illinois, the daughter of Leonard and Ruby Witters Holt, and sister of Joyce Pickering of Arlington, Virginia, all of whom preceded her in death. She graduated from Mount Vernon Township High School in 1956, after which she studied at Indiana University. On August 12, 1957, she married David Edward Kuenz at St. Mary’s Catholic Church and never looked back. Together, they raised six children across five states, settling first in Rome, Georgia, and then, for the last forty years, in Orlando. She was smart and witty, full of opinions and love, fun at parties and at home. She talked to strangers in bars, and they talked back. At the end, catching her breath, she deadpanned that the worst part of hospice was not knowing how Yellowstone would end. At once both casual and elegant, she invested everyday routines with grace. On Sundays, after mass, as her children ate glazed doughnuts, she shared grasshopper cocktails with David and danced like no one was watching. Her penmanship was exquisite until the day she died. Independent and adaptable, she always made the best of what she had to work with in the moment. In Rome, she refashioned herself as a professional baker and ran a catering business out of her home, including making what were rightly judged the best wedding cakes in the entire Floyd County area. She later retired from SunTrust Bank in Orlando in 2003, after a 23-year career calling out credit card frauds, a vocation for which she was singularly well suited. She was gentle with animals. She had priorities and knew them. She traveled early and by design and had the mementos and pictures to prove it: at seventeen, she sits next to her mother in a Las Vegas restaurant in cocktail dress and pearls, drinking a Shirley Temple with a straw. She appears later in photos all over the United States and Europe, freezing in Alaska, in front of Notre Dame in Paris, on a camel in Egypt, at Red Square in Moscow, a café table in Estonia. She was sighted in Morocco, Turkey, Hungary, Israel, Jordan, and Palestine. She made friends everywhere she went and kept them for life, especially the Germans. Besides her family, the major theme of her life was music. She enjoyed early formal training in choral singing and piano, which she kept up at some effort, practicing Tchaikovsky and Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata over the din of six kids in a small house. She kept Elvis 78s and was partial to rhythm and blues. She was known to sing along to Tom Jones. A pianist at St. John Vianney Catholic Church in Orlando for 27 years, she was invited to try out the new Schoenstein pipe organ at the Basilica of the National Shrine of Mary, Queen of the Universe. Always the alto, she played one note: middle C. She is survived by David Kuenz, her husband of 66 years, and all six of her children: David Jr., (Nancy) Rome, Georgia; Beth Croucher (Dave Lidke), Denver, Colorado; Jane Kuenz (Shelton Waldrep), Cumberland, Maine; Sharon Gearhart (Jeff), Ft. Pierce, Florida; Jim Kuenz, Hiram, Georgia; and Leanne Hahn (Steve), Plant City, Florida. She is remembered dearly by her grandchildren and their spouses (Marc and Rachael Kuenz and Bryan Kuenz; Tommi Gore and Tyler and Carolina Gore; Lance Croucher and Lauren Laire; Chloe and Lily Waldrep; Matt and Joe Gearhart; Michael Hahn and Haley Dixon, Christian Hahn, and Kaylee Hahn), her three great-grandchildren (Annie, Emma, and Brooklyn) and a host of cousins, nieces, nephews, and other family and friends across the country. Donations in her memory can be made to your local animal shelter or the American Lung Association.

Rozan Holt Kuenz

May 29, 1938 - January 25, 2024