Vera Kool

November 13, 1927 - May 4, 2021

Our cherished mother, grandmother and great grandmother Vera Maria Rys Kool peacefully passed away in her sleep on May 4 2021 in Grayslake Illinois. She was born in 1927 in what is now Jeseník in the Czech Republic then known as Freiwaldau, Czechoslovakia. She is the widow of Cornelis Kool (1924 - 2010). They married in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her Parents are Ladislav Rys (1900 - 1964) and Marianna Gisela Valerie (von Istler) Rys (1905 - 1991) and her brothers and their spouses are Jorge (Jiri) (1932 - 2015) and Shirley (Cullen) Rys (1936 - 2015) and Jan (1937 - 2021) and Bibianna (Sula) Rys all of the State of Sao Paulo Brazil. Her children and their spouses are Ivo Pieter and Elizabeth (Farley) Kool of Bentonville, AR and Nina Jarmila (Kool) and Kenneth Nethercote of Grayslake Illinois. Her grandchildren are Niall Nethercote, Fiona (Kool) St Pierre, Helen (Nethercote) Kort, Jessica (Kool) McCarthy, and Marc Nethercote. Her great-grandchildren are Emma McCarthy, Aria McCarthy, Kaiden Kort, Liam Kort, and Clay Nethercote. We all will miss her dearly. She grew up in several paper mill towns in the Czech Republic and Slovakia (then Czechoslovakia). She spent WWII in Slovakia and participated with her father in the Slovak National Uprising against the Germans in 1944. She immigrated to Brazil in 1948 after escaping from the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia to join her father who was starting a new pulp and paper mill in Parana. She immigrated to United States in 1957 and became a US citizen. Vera moved to Peru in 1964, then to England in 1967, then to Switzerland in 1968, then to England in 1973 and back to the United States in 1975. She took every move as a new challenge learning the culture and all the tourist sites to take her many visitors around. On a more serious note, she acted as a translator for numerous refugees entering Switzerland as a result of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in the late 1960’s helping them find housing, jobs, and medical services. She was fluent in 9 languages (and understood a few more) and was very proud of working as a civilian employee of the U.S. Army Forces Command at Fort McPherson in Georgia until she retired. Her lifelong passion was tennis and she played until she was into her late 70’s. She skied from 4 years old till into her late 60’s always on Black slopes. Hiking in the mountains in spring was always a must. She was an avid reader. All funeral services will be private.