Stella Ethel (Shirley) BURRAS

SHIRLEY, BURRAS, OWENS, VELDHOUSE, BROOKS, STONE

Posted By: Sarah Thorson Little (email)
Date: 2/10/2024 at 13:06:41

Stella Burras
March 10, 1929 ---- June 6, 2020

Funeral services for Stella Burras, age 91, of Marshalltown formerly of Renwick will be held at 11:00 A.M. on Wednesday, June 10, 2020, at St. Paul Lutheran Church in Renwick with visitation 1 hour prior. Interment will be in Norway Township Cemetery in Kanawha. Social distancing practices will be followed at the visitation, funeral, and graveside services. Both the funeral and burial services will be live streamed on Oakcrest Funeral Services' Facebook page.

Stella Ethel (Shirley) Burras died at the Iowa Veterans Home on June 06, 2020. Stella was born March 10, 1929 to Paul Wilbur and Eloisa Isabell (Owens) Shirley on her Grandmother Shirley's farm near Queen City, Missouri. Stella was the 6th child and 5th daughter in a family that saw 11 children grow to adulthood. In 1935, the family moved 40 miles north to a farm near Blakesburg, Iowa. Stella attended Wapello County rural elementary schools. She graduated from Blakesburg High School in 1947, where one of her favorite memories was playing guard on their 6-player girls' basketball team.

Stella attended Iowan Wesleyan College in Mount Pleasant for one year before becoming a rural schoolteacher near Blakesburg. In 1949 she moved to rural Wright County (near Olaf and Kanawha) in order to be the teacher in a rural Norway Township (section 17, T93N, R25W) school. She lived across from the school with Richard and Jennie Veldhouse where she met their neighbor, Irving B. Burras. Stella and Irving were married on June 27, 1951, in Winterset, Iowa.

Stella spent her married life as a farm wife and mother. Stella and Irving's first farm was near her parents outside of Ottumwa, where their eldest son, Bernie, was born. In 1954 they returned to Wright County, settling on Renwick as their long-term home in 1963. All seven of their children were confirmed at the St. Paul Lutheran Church and graduated from Boone Valley High School. Stella's children are Irving ("Bernie," 1951); James (1954); Gail (1954), Rex (1956), Raymond Burdett ("Ray," 1957), Lee (1959) and Bruce (1967). Stella routinely mentioned she only planned to have three children.

Stella returned to teaching in 1964 when she became the 6th grade teacher at Titonka Elementary School. Over the next decade she taught 6th grade at West Bend, Wesley and Goldfield. Tiring of the beat-up farmhouse, Stella bought a large house in Renwick in 1969. In 1971 - as a 42-year-old mother of 7, schoolteacher, farm wife and commuting student - Stella graduated from Drake University with her bachelor's degree in Elementary Education. In 1974, Stella switched from teaching to welding at Trigg's Manufacturing in Belmond. She worked there for 2 years, before becoming a welder and then the welding supply manager at Hagie Manufacturing in Clarion where she remained for five years. Irving died in 1983.

In 2014 Stella moved to the Iowa Veteran's Home, a place she very much enjoyed and where she was wonderfully treated. She lived there because of Irving's naval service aboard the USS Swasey (DE 248) during World War II.

Stella was preceded in death by her parents Paul and Isabell Shirley (1974, 2001, respectively), her husband Irving (1983), son Ray (2005), daughters-in-law Joanna (2017) and Alicia (2012), infant grandson Samuel (1997), and siblings Lawrence, Keith, John, Laura, Jean, Esther, and Ruth. Survivors are three siblings - Robert (Shirley) of Billings, Montana, Charles of Walnut, Iowa, and Joyce (Marvin) Brooks of Knoxville, Iowa, six children - Bernie of Renwick, James of Middleburg, Florida, Gail of Pontiac, Illinois, Rex (Chris) of Mauldin, South Carolina, Lee (Lori) of Ames, Iowa, and Bruce (Maryca) of West Lafayette, Indiana, 10 grandchildren and 11 great grandchildren.

Overall, Stella's life was a wonderful testament to being a good human, Christian, citizen, wife, mother and grandmother. To the very end she was especially proud of her grandchildren, her flower and vegetable gardens, her rural upbringing, her Grandfather Benjamin Stone's combat service in the US Civil War's 17th and 114th Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regiments, her membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution......and maybe - just maybe - her kids in general. Stella will be buried alongside Irving in Norway Cemetery, Wright County, following a service at St. Paul Lutheran's Church in Renwick.

https://www.oakcrestfuneralservices.com/obituary/459185/Stella-Burras/obituary-services/