Grace McIver

TORRINGTON, WYOMING...............Funeral services for GRACE ELIZABETH CANADAY MCIVER, will be held at 1:00p.m. Saturday March 24, 2007 at the Colyer Funeral Home Chapel with Pastor Ron Russell officiating. Burial will follow in the Valley View Cemetery. Grace died at Community Hospital on Tuesday March 20, 2007. Memorials may be directed to the Goshen Care Center Activities Department. The casket will be closed. Arrangements are under the direction of the Colyer Funeral Home and friends may send condolences to the family at www.colyerfuneralhome.com. Grace was born February 1, 1916 in Paige, Nebraska. Her parents, Frank Overton Canaday and Addie Mae Hackworth Canaday, moved with Grace and her two older sisters, Ethel and Mabel, to the Moore Springs community when Grace was just two years old. The Canadays traveled by train from Eastern Nebraska and bought the place across from the Moore Springs school house where they farmed until they retired in the late 1940's. The ranch is still in the family now belonging to the Bass family. Grace and her sisters grew up in that community all excelling in their school work and enjoying the ranch life. When they reached high school age when most ranch kids had to move to town, one by one they went off to Campion Academy, a Seventh Day Adventist school in Loveland, Colorado. Grace would tell about having a school dress and a good dress and then some work clothes to wear while helping with chores which she did a lot. She also told about killing a rattlesnake by throwing a rock at it hard when she was a young girl. Grace graduated at the head of her academy class at only sixteen and went off to Union College in Lincoln, Nebraska for one year while her sisters were there. Eventually all three girls ended up back in Wyoming teaching school. Grace taught at Jay Em and Rawhide from 1933 to 1935 remembering that many of the young men she taught were nearly her age. On May 26, 1935, Grace married Raymond Burgess McIver who had been working on various ranches around the Lusk area. As work was scarce, they moved to Arkansas at the beginning of 1936. Their first two children Farris and Imogene were born in 1936 and 1937 in Harrison, Arkansas. In 1938 the family moved back to Wyoming to work on a ranch near Big Trails. They stayed in the Ten Sleep area for the next four years. It was during that time that Grace's sister Ethel died and Ray and Grace took care of her children for a time. This made five children under the age of five in a little house with no running water. Roy Joy and Glee were always very dear to Ray and Grace and they were always glad they had been there at that time for Ethel's children. Another heartache that occurred during this time was that Ray and Grace had a third child, Alton Glenn, who lived only three days. It was many years later that it was discovered that their incompatible blood types, the Rh factor, caused the birth defects that did not allow Alton to survive. There was a short time when Ray and Grace moved to Sunrise, Wyoming and Farris and Imogene started school. Ray was working the railroad and they were transferred back to Greybull, Wyoming, where Linda Sue was born in 1945 and James Lee was born in 1946. In 1948 Ray took a job as foreman on a sheep ranch outside Shell, Wyoming, but in 1950 when it was time for Farris and Imogene to go to high school, they moved to Torrington and bought an acreage adjoining where Grace's parents had retired west of Torrington. This culminated the list Grace made years later of the twenty-five times they moved in the fifteen years between 1935 and 1950. Grace was a lifelong member of the Seventh-day Adventist church and became very active in the Torrington church for the rest of her life. She was the church treasurer, served on the church board and led out in children's divisions for many yea4rs as well as holding practically every other church office at some time or other. She was a devoted Christian and lived her life looking forward to the soon coming of the Lord, Jesus Christ. Grace worked for many years at Valley Mercantile as a bookkeeper and the moved over to Bloedorn Lumber Co. where worked as a bookkeeper until her retirement in 1981. Ray and Grace enjoyed several trips to different parts of the country over the years to visit their children, going to Alaska, Wisconsin, Colorado, Washington D.C. and Arizona. In her retirement she spent a lot of time visiting and helping others, Helping with church services at Goshen Care Center, knitting and crocheting afghans for all her children and grandchildren and enjoying her family and friends. Grace and her sister Mabel moved to Golden Manor. Grace, Imogene, and Mabel spent a lot of time together. Mabel's children, Donna Hood and Delwin Bass were also very good to Grace during these last years. Ray and Grace had been married forty-two years when died of brain cancer in 1977. He had just finished building a lovely addition onto their home when he passed away and it was a joy to Grace for the next twenty-seven years until she entered Goshen Care Center in 2004. Her family wanted to express their thanks for the wonderful care she received at both the Care Center and the hospital. Grace is survived by four children who loved her very much, two sons, Farris McIver and his wife Mary of Oregon and Jim McIver of Torrington; two daughters, Imogene Steele of Torrington, and Linda Greeley and her husband Gene of Oracle, Arizona; six grandchildren; nine great grand children; and three great-great grandchildren. She was preceded in death by her parents; husband; an infant son; and two sisters.

Grace McIver

February 1, 1916 - March 20, 2007