HANOVER — Quilter extraordinaire, ski instructor, successful small business owner, business adviser, pig farmer, homemaker.

That could be a list of occupations of several people but it was the resume of just one person: Rosalie Cutter.

“My mother’s life was pretty diversified,” said Cutter’s daughter, Sari White, at a recent celebration of life attended by family and friends. “She was special and it is amazing what she did in her lifetime.”

Tom Cutter, who lives in Pennsylvania, said his mother was by far “the hardest-working person” he ever met. “The best lesson I learned from her was that you can have anything you want as long as you are willing to work for it.”

The youngest of 10 children born to a single mother, Cutter died at Lebanon Center Genesis on April 26, about a month shy of her 94th birthday, following a period of failing health. Born Rosalie Goodrich in East Orange, Vt., her family moved to Norwich when she was young. She attended local schools and graduated from Hanover High School.

She went to work for her future husband’s trucking business and they married in 1948. Don Cutter, who died in 1997, was a 1945 Dartmouth graduate and college skier.

As their four children grew, they all learned to ski. Cutter also had to learn herself, though not in the typical way, her daughter recounted at the celebration of life.

White said early in their parents’ marriage, they went to Aspen Ski Resort in Colorado when Don was a national ski coach. Years later, White, on a ski trip to Aspen, spoke to her mother by phone.

“She told me, ‘Go to the top of Ruthie’s Run,’ ” said White, who lives in South Carolina. “ ‘Imagine now what it is like to fall 49 times before you get to the bottom,’ ” Cutter told her daughter. “Dad had left her on her own.”

Two years after they were married, Don and Rosalie moved to Germany for five years while Don managed the U.S. recreation area for the armed forces. Upon their return, Don helped start Okemo ski resort while Rosalie ran the resort’s ski shop.

From there, she went on to own Art Bennett’s Sports Shop in Hanover, volunteered with Hanover recreation and the Ford Sayre Ski Program, and became a master quilter. She also started her own business Ma’s Sports, which made specialized ski clothing.

“She never missed a beat. Anything Dad decided to do, she fell in stride with him,” White said. “Nothing fazed her.”

For Ford Sayre, Cutter organized events, was the program president, a ski instructor and helped the organization grow.

“She put in hundreds of hours working behind the scenes,” Tom said.

The first one up in the morning to prepare the family a full breakfast before she left for work, Cutter returned home to make everyone dinner.

“She did four hours worth of work before it was time to go to work,” Tom said. “She always had something going on. She rose to every challenge.”

After retiring from the ski business and selling the store, Don and Rosalie turned to something that had never been a part of their life: pig farming at their property, a summer home, in Lyme Center, that would eventually become their permanent home with a new house, barns and the pigs, along with cows, chickens and sheep.

White described the change as “a natural transition,” to laughter among the guests at the celebration of life.

Cutter’s grandson, Tyler Tolman, who lives in Texas, said endless energy defined his grandmother.

“I would say the theme of her life was that she was full of energy and would always find something to do with that energy,” said Tolman, looking at a binder full of photos of quilts made by Cutter.

Cutter’s traits of discipline, organization and hard work combined with her desire to share her time and talents. When Cutter became involved with something, she did not work around the edges or show up occasionally.

“She would join something, do it for a year and suddenly she would be the director,” said her son, Tom.

Cutter developed a solid business sense over the years and at Service Corps of Retired Executives, or SCORE, which provides advice to those who are planning to start a business, Tom said his mother enjoyed sharing that knowledge to help potential business get started.

“She loved seeing people get on their feet with a business,” said Tom, who used much of his mother’s advice in his own business in motorcycle repair. “She said once, ‘I’m not going to teach you how to fix motorcycles, I am going to teach you how to do business.’ ”

Paul Gross opened the jewelry store, Designer Gold, in the late 1970s and credits Cutter with giving him advice at SCORE that helped him get started.

“She was one of the few people at SCORE who knew retail,” Gross said. “Most were retired executives. She was really strict about getting a good business plan together and that helped me get financing and that really set the stage for my business.”

Of all her varied experiences and accomplishments, Cutter was perhaps best known for her beautiful quilts and work with the Northern Lights Quilt Guild of Lebanon, which serves the Upper Valley. She welcomed new quilters and took them under her wing, generously sharing what she knew to teach others.

Quilter Jeanne Woodward-Poor, of Plainfield, joined the group years after Cutter, whom Woodward-Poor called an “amazing quilter”.

“They were such role models to those of us who were 20 years younger,” Woodward-Poor said of Cutter and other early guild members. “Everybody loved them because they knew so much about their craft.”

At her celebration of life a few of her colorful quilts were available for view on a table, along with a book filled with pictures of 100s more, including a pair of stocking quilts Cutter made for her grandsons.

Cutter’s great grandson, Beckett Tolman said his “g-gram” made quilts when he and his brother were born with their names sewn into them.

“Quilting was the highlight of her life,” her daughter said.

The guild donated quilts to different groups, families or individuals, many experiencing hardship.

“When I went off to work in disaster relief, she would say, ‘There was a flood. They need quilts.’ And she would send quilts,” White continued. “She would open the paper in the morning and say, ‘Their house burned down. They need quilts.’ ”

When the neonatal intensive care unit at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center asked for “cozies” or small quilts, White said the challenge was for everyone to make six.

“Ma’s stack was this high,” White said, putting out her hand a few feet from the floor.

Linda Buzzell of Plainfield, a guild member, knew Cutter for 30 years.

“We worked together on the (guild) board,” Buzzell said. “She became a great friend and a mentor and she was a pretty important part of the guild and a force to be reckoned with.”

Buzzell and Woodward-Poor described Cutter as “feisty, but in a good way.”

At workshops, business meetings, a quilt festival and quilt retreats, Cutter’s presence was almost a guarantee.

“If we had a sew together, if we went for a long weekend to sew or have lessons, she would be there,” said Peggy Sadler, a member of the guild who owns Designer Gold with her husband Paul Gross.

While she was reliable, Cutter also could be spontaneous.

Vesta Smith and Cutter became close friends for years because their husbands were Dartmouth classmates. In the mid-1990s, Smith remembers receiving a notice in the mail from a cruise line that was offering bookings on the Queen Elizabeth II for its final, three-month round-the-world voyage.

“I kept asking people to come with me but no one said yes,” Smith said. “On the very last day I could book, Rosalie called about something else and I asked her if she wanted to go around the world on the QE2. ‘Yup,’ came the immediate reply.

“She was so much fun to travel with,” Smith said. “Every morning we would choose a lecture to attend and after there was a half hour before lunch. I went back to the cabin but she would go to the casino and come back in the room waving around her winnings and smiling.”

Patrick O’Grady can be reached at pogclmt@gmail.com.