NorthwestJuly 20, 2000

Funeral services for Leona S. Zirker, 78, will be held at 2 p.m. Friday at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Stake Center in Moscow. Bishop Thomas Miller will officiate at the service. A graveside service will be held at 11 a.m. Tuesday at the Roosevelt Memorial Park in Roosevelt, Utah.

Mrs. Zirker died Tuesday morning, July 18, 2000, at her Moscow home of congestive heart failure. Viewing will be Friday from 1 to 3 p.m. at the church prior to the service.

She was born Leona Sagers Shields on Sept. 20, 1921, at Arcadia, Utah, the youngest child of Marvin and Marion Sagers Shields. She grew up on a farm where she learned to work hard. She attended grade school at Myton, Utah, and high school at Roosevelt, where she graduated in 1940. She then attended Brigham Young University for three years majoring in elementary education. Leona then taught school at Roosevelt and Myton for the next three years. She had also worked as a substitute teacher at Warden, Wash., during the 1960s.

Leona married Kenneth E. Zirker at the Temple in Salt Lake City on June 10, 1946. The couple lived in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Washington during the next six years. In 1952, they settled in Warden, where they lived for the next 40 years. Mr. Zirker was a farmer, teacher and principal in Warden. Following Mr. Zirker's retirement, the family moved to Moscow in 1992, where they have made their home since.

She was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She held numerous callings in the LDS Church, including Primary, Mutual, Sunday school and Relief Society. Her interests included her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, whom she kept close by writing a weekly family letter, music, genealogy, flowers and people. She was loved by all who knew her. She touched many lives and will be greatly missed.

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She had also served two missions for the LDS Church, one in Kentucky from 1984 to 1986 and the other at Salt Lake City Genealogy Library from 1992 to 1993. She had also served as a Temple Worker at the Seattle Temple for 5½ years and at the Spokane Temple for six months.

Survivors include her husband of 54 years, Kenneth Zirker, at Moscow, Idaho; two sons, Eugene of Dubuque, Iowa and Kent of Moscow; two daughters, Brenda Richards of Moscow and Tami Zirker of Roosevelt; one brother, Ralph Shields of West Valley City, Utah; 21 grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren. Her parents, one brother, Wanless Shields, and two sisters, Gladys Ross and Elsie Neilson, preceded her in death.

Memorial gifts may be given to Hospice of the Palouse, Gritman Home Health Services, 700 South Main, Moscow 83843.

Kramer Funeral Home of Palouse Wash., is in charge of arrangements. Hullinger-Olpin Mortuary is in charge of the graveside service in Roosevelt.

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