Connie K. Eller

Connie Kay Eller was born August 31, 1943 in rural Davis County, Iowa. She was the daughter of Roy and Shirley (Goldizen) Howard of Bloomfield, Iowa. Growing up, Connie had major speech problems and following seventh grade spent several weeks that summer receiving treatment at the University of Iowa. This kindled an interest in speech therapy and, following graduation from Bloomfield High School in 1961, she earned bachelor's and master's degrees in the field at Northeast Missouri State College (now Truman State University) at Kirksville in 1965 and 1969. She was the first person in her family to go to college. In the late sixties, she served as a speech therapist in rural Story County, Iowa , Manchester, Iowa, and Plymouth, Minnesota.
On August 16, 1969, the day after receiving her master's degree she was married in Bloomfield to Thomas Eller. They would reside in Denison and Connie served as a speech therapist in Crawford County public schools for a year. She then stopped working for eight years during which the couple's children were born -- Chris, now of Denison, Katherine (Kate), now of Chicago, and Susan, now of New York City. Seeking to fulfill her talents, she then returned to speech therapy, working in local schools for 30 years for the Western Hills Area Education Agency. Among the schools she served were Denison, Charter Oak, Schleswig, Dow City, Ricketts, Mapleton, and Onawa, as well as Zion Lutheran and St. Rose elementary schools.
Connie diagnosed and treated children's speech problems with a careful and rigorous scientific approach. At the same time, she put children wonderfully at ease to bring them successfully through therapy. She treated hundreds of students in Western Iowa and took great joy in helping them, where possible, overcome what were often difficult and, at times, most serious conditions.
Connie became a Christian in her teens and decades later, with assistance from her sister, Carole Wixom, would witness the Faith to her parents who in time became Christians. She also became an insightful Bible student.
Days before starting a long-scheduled retirement in 2008, Connie began developing memory problems. What at first was thought to be nothing much was diagnosed as dementia the following year and Connie's health and mind failed under the relentless assault of the disease. In April, 2014 she entered nursing home care, sustained a stroke in May, 2016, and died at Eventide in Denison on August 24, 2016.
Connie will be remembered as an optimistic self-starter, a happy and naturally friendly person of great caring, and, simultaneously, a very private person.
Connie was preceded in death by her parents and her twin sister, Carolyn Howard. Connie is survived by her husband, her three children, daughter-in-law, Tonya (Sonnichsen) Eller, and her grandchildren who are the children of Chris and Tonya -- Amanda of Ankeny, and Austin and Parker, both university students. She is also survived by her sister, Carole, of Bloomfield, other relatives, friends, and the students whom she served. Throughout, she was fully loved by her family.