Driving Miss Norma: Norma Bauerschmidt's 13,000-Mile Road Trip at 90

In the summer of 2015, a few weeks after losing her husband of 67 years, 90-year-old Norma Bauerschmidt was diagnosed with uterine cancer. Doctors recommended surgery and chemotherapy. Norma turned them down, and instead climbed into a motorhome with her son Tim, his wife Ramie Liddle and their poodle Ringo. "Let's go have some fun," she said, and for the next year that is exactly what they did.

Two archive photographs of Norma Bauerschmidt on her family journey — Norma Bauerschmidt on the road. Photos: Driving Miss Norma.

Who was Miss Norma?

Norma Jean Bauerschmidt had spent much of her life in Michigan. When her husband Leo died in 2015, Tim and Ramie invited her to travel with them in their motorhome. Her endometrial cancer, a form of uterine cancer, was found at almost the same time. Faced with a hysterectomy and chemotherapy, she chose the road.

The family set up a Facebook page, Driving Miss Norma, to keep friends up to date. It grew to hundreds of thousands of followers around the world, who watched a Midwestern grandmother discover places she had never seen.

Norma Bauerschmidt smiling during the family road trip. Gallery attribution: Driving Miss Norma.

Norma beside a viewpoint overlooking a colourful Yellowstone pool. Gallery attribution: Driving Miss Norma.

The Driving Miss Norma road trip

In a little over a year the family covered nearly 13,000 miles, visiting more than 75 places in 32 states, including dozens of national parks, monuments and recreation areas. An early stop was Blue Earth, Minnesota.

The photographs tell the story of the journey: Norma at the rim of the Grand Canyon, by the colourful hot springs of Yellowstone, in front of a NASA emblem and beneath aircraft in an aviation museum, at the Corn Palace in South Dakota and in front of Spaceship Earth at EPCOT in Florida. She rode in a hot-air balloon, took the wheel of a boat, held snow in her hands and sat with her feet in the water on a beach.

Norma and a companion beside an interpretive sign overlooking the Grand Canyon

Norma and a companion posing in front of a large NASA emblem

Norma holding snow beside a companion during the family trip

Norma viewing aircraft suspended inside an aviation museum

Norma and a companion looking across a mountain lake from a boat

Norma smiling beside a large prickly pear cactus

Norma waving from the steering position of a boat

Man carrying a smiling Norma beside a hot-air-balloon basket

View into a yellow hot-air-balloon envelope above its basket

Norma smiling beside a companion during a balloon flight

A new lease on life

Norma spoke to CBS News in the spring of 2016, and her answer to what the trip meant was simple: "They've given me a new lease on life, I should say." She ate ice-cream sundaes, made friends wherever the RV stopped and became, in her nineties, a symbol of choosing how to spend the time you have.

Her last stop was San Juan Island in Washington State. Norma died at the age of 91 on Friday 30 September 2016. "Today we are letting go," the family wrote on Facebook. A memorial was held in Friday Harbor, the island's main town.

Norma standing beside her wheelchair on a beach

Norma and a companion beside a harnessed horse

Norma waving through an open window of the family motorhome

Norma beside a mounted bison head during a stop on the trip

Norma and a dog beside a cartoon corn statue at the Corn Palace

Norma resting in her wheelchair with her feet beside shallow water

The book and what the story teaches

Tim Bauerschmidt and Ramie Liddle later told the full story in their book Driving Miss Norma, an account of the year on the road, the people they met and the conversations about life and death they shared with Norma.

The lesson many readers took from it has little to do with medicine and a lot to do with listening. Norma's family asked her what she wanted and then made it possible. Planning a trip with an older relative works the same way: ask what they would enjoy, build in rest days and comfortable stops, and let them set the pace.