Alma E Denker

Alma Emma Denker was born on April 18, 1923, the daughter of Henry F. and Olga Beermann. She died on September 12, 2014 at the Eventide Lutheran Home in Denison at the age of ninety-one.
Alma was born in Nishnabotna Township in Crawford County. She was baptized in Christ on June 24, 1923 in Buck Grove, Iowa, confirmed on March 21, 1937 and married January 1, 1947, both at Zion Lutheran Church in Denison.
She attended country school in Washington Township through the 8th grade. She graduated from high school in Defiance as valedictorian of the class of 1940.
After graduation, Alma had various jobs until her marriage to Clarence Denker. They lived in an apartment briefly before moving to a farm on the Vernon Voss Road. Then they moved to the farm in Paradise Township where they lived until 2008.
Clarence and Alma were blessed with the birth of 5 children.
Over the years she was active in helping with raising hogs and sheep and milking cows. Later they built a 5,000-head chicken-laying barn and gathered thousands of eggs. At one time they were part owners of a farrow-to-finish hog confinement barn and ran the Dairy Mart in Denison for which she baked lots of goodies to sell.
The couple took turns car pooling to drive their children to Zion Lutheran School, and always got the children to church and Sunday school. Occasionally, they enjoyed dancing, joy-riding and bowled on a bowling team.
Alma was active at church with the Evening Guild Ladies Group by managing the Zion Book Store for many years, as well as helping do art work for the blue Zion cookbook, making banners for the Cradle Roll, making the broccoli cheese soup and crafts for the craft fair, and making those famous apple pies.
She was the head of the church kitchen making maid rites and organizing pies to go to the fair booth for many years.
When she was not doing farm work, she enjoyed gardening of vegetables and flowers. She did a lot of canning, sewing, quilting, embroidering, needle point, crafts, carpentry, fixing things, reading, cooking and baking. She made beautifully decorated cakes earning recognition for a wedding cake in the Maid of Scandinavia Magazine.
Alma was a caring person who took a few relatives into her house and cared for them near the end of their lives.
Alma spent almost a year living with Colene and Pastor. After surgery in 2009, she went to Eventide to recover from pneumonia, and decided to stay so she would not be alone all day and instead could go to activities there.
She was a caring, giving and loving person to everyone in her life. She was often referred to as such a “little sweetheart”.
She was preceded in death by her husband, Clarence, her parents and Clarence’s parents, infant twin sisters, an infant brother, her sister, Irene Boeck , brother and wife, Walter and Leone Beermann, brother, Edward Beermann, sister-in-law, Joan Beerman, brothers-in-law, Mervin Fink, Virgil Denker, John Lorenzen and Wesley Ahrenholtz and two grandsons, Timothy and Jacob Gosch. She is survived by three daughters: Sharon and husband, Marc, Colene and husband, Rev. Kurt, and Julie and husband, Troy; two sons: Dennis and Larry; seventeen grandchildren and 8 great-grandchildren; one brother, Harold, and two sisters, Dorothy and husband, Shorty, and Lorena, and sisters-in-law, Carmen, Virgene, Ruby, and Phyllis. One brother-in-law, Gaylord and wife Maxine, Elmer and wife Joyce, and many nieces, nephews and a host of other relatives and friends.