Funeral Services Held For Edith Piper, 105

By Kristi Wright, World Herald Staff Writer

Edith H. Piper was among the first women to vote in Nebraska after the 19th Amendment was ratified, said her granddaughter, Linda Scholz.

Piper died Wednesday of natural causes at a local nursing home. She was 105.

She was born Oct. 13, 1898, in Decatur, Neb., and her family moved to Sioux City, Iowa, when she was a teen.

She became engaged to Kenneth Piper of Blair, Nebr., before he left to fight in World War I. She told her grandchildren of watching her fiancé leave on the train and wondering if she would ever see him again.

He returned. They married. He gave her a wedding ring with a stone he purchased in Russia. He smuggled it into the United States under his tongue. Scholz says her grandmother wore the ring until her death.

Edith and Kenneth sharecropped various farms throughout northeast Nebraska. They raised eight children.

“They lived hard but simple lives that taught them to see beauty in the smallest things”, said Scholz, who lives in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, and commented by e-mail. “She deeply loved her God and lived her belief in him with every fiber of her being”.

Services were Monday at Bethany Funeral Home Chapel.

Other survivors include sons Franklin, David and Iver, all of Omaha; daughters Clara Keller of Wisconsin, Patsy Stone of Missouri and Betty Smith of California; 16 grandchildren; and many great-grandchildren.

~~~ Obituary courtesy of the Nebraska Washington County Genealogical Society. Newspaper clippings on file in the Blair, Nebraska Public Library ~~~

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