Carmel L. Head

Carmel Louise Johnson Head was born October 7, 1916, in Hawesville, Kentucky, the daughter of Timothy Sylvester and Hilda Jane Johnson. She passed away March 20, 2017, at the Dunlap Nursing and Rehab Center in Dunlap, Iowa, at the age of one hundred.
Carmel was raised in Kentucky where she attended country school and then attended high school at St. Joseph’s Convent near St. Joseph, Kentucky. She married William (Bill) Ray Head on February 27, 1935, at the St. Lawrence Catholic Church near Knottsville, Kentucky. While living in Kentucky, they were blessed with two sons.
Carmel and Bill farmed and Bill worked in the coal mines throughout the winter months until moving to a farm near Sioux City, Iowa. Upon moving to Iowa, they were blessed with two daughters and another son. They moved to a farm south of Dow City, Iowa, in 1952. Seventeen years later, Bill and Carmel sold their farm and moved to Fairland, Oklahoma, where they owned and operated the Stardust Motel and Restaurant. Carmel also worked at the Shangri-La Resorts in Oklahoma where she was the manager of housekeeping.
They retired and moved back to Dow City, Iowa, in 1982, where Carmel was active in the St. Mary’s Catholic Church. Carmel was a loving wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother, who enjoyed barbecues, reading, visiting with family and friends, playing cards, playing Bingo, and fishing with Bill.
In addition to her parents, Carmel was preceded in death by her husband, Bill; and two sons, Sylvester and Pat, as well as many other loving relatives. Survivors include: one son, Tom and his wife, Pat; two daughters, Betty and her husband, Roger, and Noel and her husband, Butch; daughters-in-law, Marlene and Marilyn; twenty grandchildren; forty-one great-grandchildren; thirty-two great-great-grandchildren; one sister, Lucille; and many other relatives and friends.