Sheila Eileen Asselin
September 21, 1937 - August 19, 2026
Born September 21, 1937 — Asheville, Buncombe County, North Carolina
Some lives are lived in a straight line. Sheila Asselin's was lived in every direction at once — across oceans and continents, through kitchens and classrooms and prison libraries, always at full speed, always with her hands busy making something better than what she'd been given.
She was born Sheila Eileen on September 21, 1937, in Asheville, North Carolina, sister to Dennis and Theresa, who went before her. She was a Major's daughter and a soldier's wife — married to Henry Asselin, a Bronze Star, Silver Star, and Purple Heart hero, the man behind the historic missile that stands in Warren, New Hampshire. While Henry served in Vietnam, Sheila held the home front — not just keeping it functioning, but keeping it thriving, raising their children and running their world with one hand while writing him a letter every single day with the other. He fought a war overseas; she made sure he had a home worth fighting for. But anyone who knew them knew the truth Henry knew best: she was the force behind the legend. The delta to his alpha. The warrior queen to his holding the line. He was the monument the town could see; she was the foundation it stood on.
She came up in an era that valued her for a pretty face — and she was often the smartest person in the room. She carried an intellect that rivaled the best minds of her day, and she spent a lifetime proving it to a world that was slow to look past the surface. It never stopped her. It never even slowed her down.
And what a mind she put to work. She raised seven children in Panama and across the United States — Virginia, Alabama, and New Hampshire — and lived a life that also carried her to Germany and around the world, traveling through Vietnam, Panama, Costa Rica, and Europe. Then, in her forties, with seven children raised and a thousand miles behind her, she walked across a stage and took her college degree — because it was never too late to claim what was hers. She wrote articles. She won a ballroom dancing competition. She drove — actually drove — from Alaska to Maine to Florida to California, because the country was there and so was she.
She worked like she lived: fearlessly and everywhere. In the 1970s she worked at a sawmill operating heavy machinery — running equipment most men wouldn't let a woman near, and running it well, facing constant sexual harassment and unwanted comments. She and Henry ran the Rest A While restaurant and the historic Moosilauke Inn together, hosting the country’s elite. Years before she became one of the first female managers of Taco Bell, breaking a ceiling in polyester and name tag before most people knew the ceiling was there.
She was gloriously, unapologetically herself. She sang opera. She bought moonshine. She met Bill Monroe at a revival and listened to the Grateful Dead — and heard no contradiction between them. She listened to NPR with fervor and could argue the news, history, politics with anyone brave enough to try. She knew the poems that made America great, and she'd prove it — reading Robert Frost aloud at a bonfire, singing with abandon while the sparks rose. She contained multitudes and never apologized for a single one of them: an Asheville girl equally at home at an opera, quilt show, Vietnamese market, Turkish bazaar, a revival tent, and the glow of a fire with a poem in her hands.
But it was her courage that made her extraordinary. Her eldest son had the confidence to be openly gay in the 1970s — and he had that confidence because he had her. When the Catholic Church told her she had to choose between her faith and her son, she didn't hesitate: she walked away from the Church and walked beside her boy. No institution on earth outranked her love for her children. When the Klan operated in her community, she didn't look away — even when the hoods came off, and the faces underneath were her neighbors. She reported them to the Southern Poverty Law Center anyway, because right was right, and she was never afraid of the people next door. And when she lost that same beloved son to AIDS — in the years when AIDS was still a dirty word — she refused to whisper it. She said it out loud, and she didn't care who heard. She marched with ACT UP when marching cost something. She sewed two panels for the AIDS Memorial Quilt —one for her son and his partner, stitching her own grief into fabric alongside a nation's —and two patches for the Safe Motherhood quilt project, the same steady hands that sewed quilts for babies in the NICU. She taught reading in Alabama prisons — and when Henry had heart surgery, her students sent her flowers. Think about the energy you need to have when maximum security prisoners take a collection to send you flowers. She volunteered at food banks and gave her heart and her hands to causes that made life better for children and animals — the ones who couldn't speak for themselves always had her voice. That was the measure of her: the people the world forgot never forgot her.
She traveled the world. She went with her daughter and granddaughter to Ireland on a girls' trip, three generations laughing their way across the green. Learning about the roots that we all grew from.
And underneath all of it ran the deepest current of her life: Sheila escaped abuse and neglect, and instead of passing that inheritance down, she broke it. Not always perfect or right, but we tried to create change every day. She built cycles of love where there had been cycles of harm — and taught her children and grandchildren to keep breaking them.
She is survived by strong, determined daughters and granddaughters who hold the line she drew, who have built families on the foundation she laid. She raised sons who know how to respect and love powerful women — because they were raised by one and grandsons who made her so proud, and great-grandchildren in abundance.
She was the quilt and the needle. The march and the reason for marching. The dance and the victory.
Hold the line, Sheila. It's held.