The life of a long-time Mountain Home resident, a school teacher, a major community supporter and a member of a pioneering family in the Twin Lakes Area’s telecommunications industry is being remembered by the local community. Ruth “Sissy” Baker Czeschin died Friday in Mountain Home at the age of 88.
Czeschin was a Mountain Home High School alumnus and a drum major in the high school band. After receiving her teaching degree at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, she moved to Michigan and taught elementary school for two years before returning home to Mountain Home. She taught for one year at the Old Oakland Schoolhouse with Evelyn Hackler.
Czeschin married her late husband, Calvin, in 1962 and helped him run the Mountain Home Telephone Company and Yelcot Telephone Company. Mountain Home Telephone merged with Century Telephone with Century Telephone Enterprises in 1975. That same year, the Czeschins purchased Home Cable Company, expanded the company’s cable footprint and brought Chicago superstation WGN to the area.
Sissy Czeschin returned to the classroom in 1979 at the newly-constructed Mountain Home Kindergarten. She taught the district’s inaugural class of public school kindergartners.
In 1988, the Czeschin family formed Ultimate Auto Group. They later acquired Freedom Ford in Melbourne. The Czeschins would go on to purchase Mountain View Telephone Company in 2007.
As a supporter of the local community, Sissy Czeschin was instrumental in establishing Mountain Home’s first city playground at Hickory Park. In honor of the contributions she, her husband and Laura Newth made to Arkansas State University-Mountain Home, the school’s technical center was renamed the Czeschin-Newth Workforce Development Center this past September.
Funeral services for Sissy Czeschin will be March 30 at 2 at First United Methodist Church’s main sanctuary. Visitation will be Friday from 4 to 6 in the church’s contemporary sanctuary. Burial will be in Mountain Home Cemetery.
She is survived locally by two daughters, Sara Zimmerman of Mountain Home and Karen Reed of Eureka, Mo.; her son, Calvin Czeschin of Mountain Home; her step daughter, Betsie Czeschin of Cotter; and two of six grandchildren, Haley and Trey Czeschin of Mountain Home.
Memorials may be made to Mountain Home Bomber Band Boosters, First United Methodist Church or the Mountain Home Cemetery Endowment, care of the Twin Lakes Community Foundation.
Arrangements are by Roller Funeral Home.
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