Rachael Olejniczak Obituary

Rachael A. Hoover Olejniczak

Our Beloved Mother, Rachael Alyce Hoover Olejniczak passed peacefully from this mortal life just three days shy of celebrating her 100th birthday. She was born on April 30, 1925, in the small logging camp of McGaffey, New Mexico, to Ophelia and James Quinones.

Rachael graduated from Gallup High School in 1944, where her love of the visual arts became apparent. She attended Sacred Heart Catholic Church while she lived in Gallup.

During her last years in high school, she and several friends ventured down to the Santa Fe Depot in Gallup to bid farewell to fellow students bound for boot camps in California on a troop train. It was there she met the man who would become her husband. A young soldier named Earl Hoover from West Virginia was also heading west on the same train.

After two years of long-distance letter communications between Western Europe and New Mexico, the soldier returned to the USA, and the courtship continued. The two married on December 1, 1945, and headed west with the Santa Fe railroad to San Bernardino, California, where Earl worked as a diesel electrician until his early death in 1962.

Sadly, Rachael became a widow at age 37, due to Earl's early death from cancer at age 43. She was left to finish raising her children alone, but her unwavering faith in God guided her future choices. She took a job at a West Coast-based furniture chain, where she advanced and flourished as Office Manager until her retirement in 1993.

Five years after losing Earl, Rachael found love again when she met Arthur 'Ski' Olejniczak. They married and eventually welcomed a baby daughter, Michelle Marie, who was reared along with her niece Kristen. Rachael loved gathering her family around her as often as possible.

In 2019, Rachael 'returned to her roots' when she joined her eldest daughter and son-in-law in their move from Southern California to Farmington, NM, where she enjoyed the 'open spaces' and the acquaintance of their close neighborhood and church family.

Rachael was preceded in death by her beloved Grandparents, Parents, Brother, Aunts and Uncles, and daughter Sheryl Alice Spada in 2020. She is survived and profoundly missed by her living children Earleen (Don) Dudley, Brad (Mary Jean) Hoover, Cynthia (Jim) Clifford, and Michelle Campa, as well as her 9 grandchildren, 11 Great-grandchildren, 1 great-great-grandson, several cousins, and many nieces and nephews, mostly throughout New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Colorado, California and Washington State.

Private interment is planned on Monday, May 19, 2025 at 10 am Sunset Memorial Park in Gallup, New Mexico. A Celebration of Rachael's Life and a Terrazas-Quinones Family Gathering is planned for late June 28, 2025, in Gallup, NM.