October 28, 2020 Doris Schuelke, 92
Doris Schuelke, 92
Funeral Services for Doris Schuelke, 92, will be held Saturday, October 24, 2020 at 11 AM at Cummings Family Funeral Home. Visitation will be held Friday, October 23, 2020 from 3-7 PM with family greeting friends from 5-7 PM. Interment will be held at Lexington Cemetery. Memorials may be directed to the Bedford United Methodist Church.
Doris Elaine Hanson Schuelke, the youngest of six children, was born on a farm southeast of Mead, Nebraska, on September 10, 1928, to Elmer Rutherford and Lizzie Belle Hanson. She attended country school until 8th grade, when it closed. Then Doris attended and graduated from Mead High School in May 1944 at the age of 15. She had planned to enlist in the U.S. Navy Cadet Nurse Corps for nurses training. World War II ended as did the program. In September she enrolled in a Jr. Secretarial Course at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln where she studied shorthand.
September 1945 she was hired as secretary to the head of the Claims Division of the U. S. Employment Service in Lincoln. Nine months later, she accepted a job as secretary to the Nebraska State Representative for the March of Dimes. She continued working there until December 2, 1951 when she married Junior Dale Schuelke, a farmer from Ashland, Nebraska, whom she had met at a dance a few years earlier. They loved dancing to the big bands that played the ballrooms in the Lincoln and Omaha area.
Since Junior did not wish to have a “wife that worked”, Doris left her 9-5 job as secretary to become a farm wife and mother, gardener, and poultry raiser. She raised fryers and delivered eggs on a regular weekly route to a restaurant and nursing homes inLincoln. The drought years of l953, l954 and l955 caused them to lose their corn crop three years in a row. They began looking for a farm in western Iowa and in January l958 moved to the farm northeast of Bedford, Iowa, where they resided until Junior’s death April 14, 2009.
To this union were born four sons: Mark Allen, Steven Dale, Brian Eugene, Dennis David and a daughter, Linda Kay.
Doris gardened, canned fruits and vegetables, sewed, taught Sunday School and Bible School at the United Methodist Church in Clearfield. She held various offices in United Methodist Women. She served as leader of the Gay Maidens 4-H Club of Conway for five years. She also served on the 4-H Extension Council.
As the boys began leaving home to attend college, Doris was drafted into helping with harvest, hauling in the grain to the bins and elevator. She continued hauling grain until she was 75 years old when they retired from farming. Though farming brought long tiring days, she and Junior enjoyed working together but also enjoyed traveling together.
While the kids were growing up, a camping trip was taken each summer – beginning with Jr’s brother’s borrowed army tent and a camping stove obtained with S&H Green Stamps. As Junior was a member of the Clearfield Lions Club, the family also spent time at the Iowa State Fair for many years helping with the shuttle buses. Camping evolved from the borrowed tent to a fold-down camper to a travel trailer and finally a fifth wheel camper.
An unimproved lot at Sun Valley Lake at Ellston was purchased in l972. A mobile home was set up and 23 years of boating and fishing with children, grandchildren and friends were enjoyed. Doris really enjoyed fishing. She and Jr. Rv’d to Alaska in l993 where she caught her first salmon. They also traveled to Hawaii and eventually traveled in all 50 states.
In March 1950 Doris had enjoyed the privilege of traveling to Europe with her mother and father to visit relatives in Denmark and Sweden. They sailed from New York City to Southampton, England, on the original Queen Elizabeth ocean liner. They toured London, crossed the English Channel, then traveled by train to Copenhagen, Denmark and then on to southern Sweden. June 1st they left Sweden and traveled by bus on a 10-day bus trip to Paris, then on by boat-train to LeHavre, France, where they sailed home to America on the Mauritania.
Doris and Junior returned to visit relatives in Sweden in 1991 and again in 2006. In 1996 while assisting with the Clearfield Lions Club shuttle-bus operation, they met a farming couple from the north island of New Zealand, John and Ann McCutcheon. Doris & Junior visited them on a trip to Australia and New Zealand in 1999. Each summer (New Zealand’s winter) John and Ann traveled to the US and visited Doris and Junior. In 2006 they invited Doris & Junior to attend their son’s wedding in NZ. John passed away a few years later. Doris traveled to visit Ann in 2010 following Junior’s death.
Other trips Junior and Doris enjoyed were visits to Japan, China and Hong Kong, a Panama Canal cruise visiting Costa Rica, Panama, Columbia, S.A., Curacao, and the Dominican Republic, and trips into Mexico. After the children left home, winters found them RV-ing to Arizona and to Alamo Rec-Veh Park, Alamo, Texas. In 1995 they purchased a small mobile home there. Doris assisted Junior with his country western music jam for several years. She served on the Alamo Rec-Veh Park Activity Board as well as singing in the Alamo Rec-Veh
Park Church Choir for years.
Doris was preceded in death by her father and mother, sisters Mildred (Earl) Robbins and Lorraine (Fred) Retzlaff; brothers Donald (Luella), Lyle (Edith) and Forrest (Rose); and her husband Junior Schuelke.
