Grace Marion Gibbs 1915-2003

GIBBS, MORGAN, HUGHES

Posted By: Connie Swearingen (email)
Date: 10/5/2008 at 00:45:58

Sioux City Journal
Sunday, January 12, 2003

UTE, Iowa -- Grace Gibbs, 87, of Ute, formerly of Soldier and Denison, Iowa, and recently of Ponca, Neb., died Friday, Jan. 10, 2003, at Elms Care Center in Ponca.

Services will be 10:30 a.m. Tuesday at St. Paul Lutheran Church in Ute. Burial will be in St. Clair Cemetery. Visitation will be after 4 p.m. Monday, with a prayer service at 7:30 p.m., at Armstrong Funeral Home in Ute.

Grace Marion Gibbs was born Jan. 14, 1915, to George Aloysius and Mae Agnes (Morgan) Hughes in the Bronx, N.Y. When Grace was 2 years old, her family moved to Mt. Vernon, N.Y., where she attended Dewitt Clinton Grade School and later graduated from Mt. Vernon High School with the class of 1933.
After the death of her mother, Grace lived with her father and kept house for him. After graduation, Grace was employed by A.S. Beck Shoe Company as a cashier and bookkeeper. When her father passed away, Grace went to live with her sister, Dorrie, and husband, Craig Evans in Flushing, Long Island, N.Y. At the start of World War II, she worked for Sperry Gyroscope Company making airplane parts for the military.

In 1944, Grace moved to Muskogee, Okla., with her sister's family when Craig was called to serve in the Air Force. In Muskogee, Grace worked at the PX on the Air Force base. This is where she met the man she would fall in love with and marry. Grace and Ervin W. Gibbs of Ute, Iowa, were married Aug. 5, 1945, in Muskogee by Captain Kidd, chaplain on the base.

When Ervin received his orders to transfer overseas, Grace moved to Ute to live with Ervin's parents, Solon and Anna Gibbs. Upon Ervin's discharge from the Air Force, the couple settled on a farm six miles south of Ute. Living on a farm in Iowa was a new experience for Grace. The first year on the farm she raised 300 chickens and only three of them died. Grandpa Gibbs said that was pretty good for a girl from the city.

Grace and Ervin were blessed with three children, Wayne Steven, Barbara Ann and Georgia Mae. The couple farmed together until Ervin's death on Sept. 8, 1967. She then moved from the farm to Ute with her two daughters while her son was serving in the Marine Corps in Vietnam. Grace was a reporter for the Ute Independent Newspaper while living in Ute. She lived in the house under the water tower until 1982, when she moved to Key West, Fla., to keep house for her widowed brother, George "Bud" Hughes. Grace returned to Iowa in 1994 and lived at Soldier Valley Homes in Soldier, Iowa. She lived at Reed House Assisted Living Center in Denison, Iowa, for a year before moving to Ponca in May 2001.

While living in Soldier, she was a member of Soldier Lutheran Church and was active in Circle II and WELCA Ladies Aide. At the time of her death, she was a member of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Ute. She was also a member of the Lucky 13 Club and Legion Auxiliary Abby Unit 442 of Ute.

Grace is survived by a son, Wayne of Nevada, Iowa; two daughters, Georgia and her husband, Rick Ham of Denison, and Barbara and her husband, Aaron Meyers of Ponca; three grandchildren, John Woodard Jr. and his wife, Janyce of Sioux City, Angie and her husband, Scott Jones of Sioux Falls, S.D., and Michael Meyers of Ponca; three great-grandchildren, J. Connor and Bryanna Grace Woodard and Elizabeth Scott Jones; a sister-in-law, Gilma Gibbs Ahlers of Danbury, Iowa; and nieces and nephews.

Along with her husband and parents, Grace was preceded in death by a brother and a sister.