LITTLE ROCK — When Astrida Allred was a young teenager, she left her home in Latvia in the Baltic region of Northern Europe with her mother to escape imminent danger during World War II. It was a trek that ultimately led the two women to safety in the United States.
“She was proud to become an American citizen,” said her only daughter, Linda Strickland. “During the second World War, the American troops that were in Europe, if you saw someone who was an American, you could feel safe and you could know they weren’t going to take advantage and hurt you. She felt safe when she came to the U.S.”
Astrida Ilze Busch Allred of North Little Rock died at Baptist Health Medical Center-Little Rock from complications of various health issues, her daughter said.
She was 84.
Allred grew up in a small Latvian village where her mother was a teacher and her father — who died of tuberculosis when she was 10 years old — built furniture.
Around 1943, Allred and her mother fled from Russian troops approaching their village.
“My mother’s mother, being a teacher, she knew she and probably her daughter were marked for extermination,” Strickland said. “When they got the word they needed to leave, they basically had a bag packed by the door. They set out on foot and proceeded through ... Lithuania ... through Poland, Czechoslovakia.”
They traveled in the countryside to avoid the war’s carnage in various towns.
“They would just [eat] the foods that were in season and gifts [that] local farmers would share,” her daughter said. “Sometimes they got to sleep in barns or in homes, or occasionally they’d get a ride in a wagon.”
Strickland said she did not know how long the two women traveled.
“Some days, all they would have were apples to eat or potatoes or whatever was a plant at the time,” her daughter said. “They would avoid meats. ... If it didn’t look right, they didn’t eat it, because there was cannibalism during the war because meats were so scarce.”
The two reached a German military work camp, where they ironed military uniforms for 12 or more hours a day, her daughter said.
“They had about a 10-by-10 room where they slept, bathed and cooked,” Strickland said.
In 1948, Allred immigrated to the United States, and her mother followed a few years later. Allred married Joe Burton in the late 1940s, and the couple primarily lived in North Little Rock until his death in 1998.
“She met everything that she encountered with a great deal of determination,” her daughter said. “She taught herself to read and write English when she got to the Untied States.”
Throughout the years, Allred was a stay-at-home mom and a florist, with a natural green thumb.
“She was the kind of person if she went into Kroger, if she saw a paltry little plant for 50 cents ... that couldn’t last another day, she’d bring it home,” Strickland said. “Nine times out of 10, it’d come back to life.”
A quiet, intelligent woman, Allred enjoyed her pets, a close circle of friends and learning about metaphysics.
“She enjoyed healing and helping other people,” said friend, Becky Rotenberry. “We’d do healing circles and hold hands, and Reiki.”
Allred was most at peace around nature and had fond memories of a trip to the Colorado mountains, her daughter said.
“We’d get out of the car and go stomp in the snow and then go sit by a brook and just listen to nature and the wind blowing through the pines and the animal sounds,” her daughter said. “That was something she enjoyed, the peace and quiet and sounds of nature.”
Arkansas, Pages 12 on 01/11/2013