Marlene Umbreit

Marlene Arliss Eide Umbreit, formerly of Memphis, Tennessee, and Yankton, South Dakota, died of natural causes Monday, Sept. 8, at age 93 in Des Moines, Iowa.

Marlene was born in Yankton on May 21,1932, and lived on a farm along with her parents, four brothers and two sisters. Her chores included taking lunch to her brothers out in the field and staying in charge of the chickens. She also detasseled corn, a job that helped her pay her way to Augustana College in Sioux Falls, S.D., where she majored in religion. After two years at Augustana, she married fellow student Douglas Wayne Umbreit, and they were married more than 50 years until his death in 2004.

They lived most of their married lives in Memphis; before that they lived in Anoka, Minnesota; Minneapolis; Sioux Falls; and Jonesboro, Arkansas. They raised three (surviving) daughters: Kristi (Umbreit) Chew, Des Moines; Jeane Umbreit, Memphis; and Hollis Umbreit, Des Moines.

In Memphis, Marlene worked as administrative assistant to the city's Board of Education. She loved to travel, whether with Doug, family or her many friends, enjoying trips to New York, southeast Asia, the Pacific Northwest and the Rockies, She visited the Folldal area of Norway, where some members of the Eide family lived before immigrating to America . Closer to home in Memphis, she became involved in her community's Frayser Park Memorial Garden, which commemorated people buried in unmarked graves there from 1890 to 1965. She was a member of Schoolfield Methodist Church and later The Church of the River (First Unitarian Church) in Memphis. In 2016 she moved to Des Moines, where two of her daughters live.

In Des Moines, Marlene resided at Edencrest Assisted Living facility, where she participated in various group activities and enjoyed visits by family and friends, including shopping trips, movies, museum visits and lunches at nearby restaurants.

Cremation was scheduled in Des Moines, and her remains will be interred alongside her husband's at The Church of the River in Memphis.