Gleeda Mary Shirk-McAfee

Gleeda Mary Shirk-McAfee Gleeda Mary Shirk was born on December 12, 1925 to James and Gayle Shirk in Madera, California. She grew up in the Tulare-Visalia area and graduated from Tulare High School in 1943. In 1946 she married First Lieutenant Howard McAfee and began her journey as an Air Force wife. She had her first child while stationed on Guam and the following three in Spokane, Sacramento and Tucson. When Howard took a job with the airlines, they moved first to Denver and then to Newport Beach. When they retired, they moved again to Riverside, California. Mary moved to Salt Lake City to be closer to family after Howard passed away. Mary was a religious woman who began each day with a prayer and reading the Bible. She always had a great sense of style and even did some modeling for a short time. She was an excellent seamstress and later took up making quilts by hand. Although she was quite hard of hearing she loved music, sang in the choir and could play a hymn or a pop tune on the piano as well as anyone. Most of all she loved to be physically active - golf was her favorite game but she also liked bowling, line dancing, water aerobics, bocci ball and tennis. She said that if she had gone to college she would like to have been a P. E. teacher. She was a wife that any man would have been lucky to have. She was a mom that was always there to listen and lend a helping hand. She was more likely to laugh than to scold and more often than not there were homemade cookies in the cookie jar. She loved being a grandmother but always wished that she did not live so far away from all of her grandchildren. Mary passed away on November 3, 2011 and will be buried next to her husband at the Riverside National Cemetery in Riverside, California. Her sister Martha Mae Shirk-McMillin, her four children, seven grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and many cousins, nieces, and nephews survive her. All of them will miss her sweet smiling face.