Ida L. (Grifhorst) MCELROY

MCELROY, GRIFHORST, ELIASON, SKILLE, DOUGHTY, BRODBECK, MARKER, SHIPMAN

Posted By: Sarah Thorson Little (email)
Date: 5/18/2010 at 11:32:25

Mason City Globe Gazette - Iowa
June 20, 2003

MASON CITY, IA — Ida L. McElroy, 86, died Wednesday (June 18, 2003) at U.S.A. Healthcare in Mason City. Funeral services will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday at St. Paul's Lutheran Church, 329 E. State St., Mason City, with Pastor Tom Healy, chaplain at Hospice of North Iowa, officiating. Interment will be in Memorial Park Cemetery. Visitation will be held one hour prior to the time of service at the church Saturday.

Ida was born Feb. 26, 1917, the daughter of Dick and Minnie (Eliason) Grifhorst of Kanawha, Iowa. After graduation from her hometown high school, Ida attended cosmetology school in Des Moines and earned her beautician's license in 1938. While commuting between Mason City to Kanawha and Chicago, during the later stages of the war, she met Bill McElroy on a train. A Coast Guard sailor on leave, Bill, of Mason City, and Ida began a friendship which would culminate in their marriage in Chicago on Nov. 12, 1944. The couple moved to Mason City, where Bill became a city policeman until his retirement in 1980 and Ida worked as a beautician. Ida served as an election-day volunteer numerous times and was a league bowler for many years. Her team went to the state tournament occasionally. A loving and supportive mother, Ida's good humor and caring were ever-present, even during the last decade as she courageously battled Alzheimer's disease.

Ida and Bill (who died Feb. 28, 2000) were active members of St. Paul's Lutheran Church for nearly 50 years. Ida's family wishes to thank the staff at U.S.A. Healthcare for their loving and tender care and attention she received. Those left to cherish her memory are her daughter, Susan Skille and her husband, Don, of Long Beach, Calif.; and sons, Doug McElroy of Mason City, and David McElroy and his wife, Patti, of Minneapolis, Minn.; grandchildren, Kevin McElroy and his wife, Barb, of Maple Grove, Minn., Heather Doughty and her husband, Bryan, of Prembrooke Pines, Fla., and Steve Skille of Long Beach, Calif.; sister-in-law, Wilma Grifhorst of Britt; brother-in-law, John Brodbeck of Savanna, Ill., and special friends, Bonnie and Ralph Marker of Mason City and Gladys Shipman of Mason City. Ida was preceded in death by her parents, her husband, two brothers and two sisters. Major Erickson Funeral Home & Crematory.