Bloomington, MN - Hatch, Lieselotte Katharina (Lilo), née Dubourdieu, age 91, of Friendship Village Bloomington, passed away April 17, 2026 surrounded by her loving family. Survived by son David (Joe) and stepdaughter Holly (John). Preceded in death by beloved husband Henry (Hank) Hatch, in 2022.

Lilo was born in 1934 in Düsseldorf, Germany. Her childhood was shaped by war. When air raids destroyed her home, she and her mother fled through the front door while fires raged around them. Her teenage sister ran out behind them carrying the family sewing machine on her back.

Evacuated to Steinach, a tiny farming village in Bavaria, Lilo and her mother were taken in by reluctant hosts. Through it all, Lilo found joy in the countryside. She attended a one-room Catholic school where a nun named Sister Maria Sabina taught her to knit, played soccer with the students, and made a young Lutheran girl feel welcome. Her best friend Maria Luisa's mother took Lilo in, and she spent her days tending cows in the high meadows, grateful simply to sleep through the night without air raid sirens.

She survived being strafed by a British Spitfire while walking with her mother on a dirt road. The pilot missed twice. Years later, telling the story to her neighbors at Friendship Village, she noted with characteristic understatement that she was lucky he was a bad shot. She sheltered under a stone bridge for two days while armies fought over her village. She was eleven when the war ended, and her family was starving until the Marshall Plan arrived in 1948. She would say plainly that without it, she would not have survived.

At sixteen, determined to build a different life, Lilo returned to Düsseldorf to live with her aunt. She worked two jobs to put herself through night school, where she learned English. After working at an advertising agency, she joined 3M. There she met a traveling American marketing man named Hank Hatch. Lilo moved to America and they married in October 1967, settling in Edina, Minnesota, where they raised David and Holly.

She was an avid reader, a skilled bridge player and a student of history, archeology, politics, and world events. She created masterful knitting work throughout her life, a craft first learned from Sister Sabina in that Bavarian schoolhouse. She was a devoted animal lover and long-time supporter of the Animal Humane Society of Minnesota. In 2006, Lilo and Hank moved to Friendship Village where they found a warm community and made many good friends.

Lilo called her life a "lucky story of survival". Those who knew her understood it was more than luck. It was resilience carried with charm, humor, and astute wisdom. She will be dearly missed by many.

In lieu of flowers, memorials are preferred to the employee appreciation fund of Friendship Village Bloomington.