Mildred Lathrop

Mildred Nadine Kjormoe Beach Lathrop, 99, of Marshalltown passed away Sunday, November 16 at Glenwood Place. Funeral services will be 11 a.m. Thursday, November 20 at First Congregational Church. Visitation will be 10 a.m. until the time of service. A luncheon will follow in the fellowship hall. The funeral will be livestreamed on the Anderson Funeral Homes Facebook page. Her cremains will be buried in Sacred Heart Cemetery in St. Anthony at a later date. Online condolences may be sent to www.andersonfhs.com.
A lifelong Iowan, Mildred was one of seven children who survived to adulthood born to Omar and Lily Kjormoe in Dunbar. Three other boys died in infancy. Another boy, Gary, came into the family after Omar died when Mildred was 17 and Lily remarried.
Mildred graduated from bustling Dunbar High School in 1944, one in a crowded class of five. She trained for and worked as a nurse's aid and married Donald Beach. Their first meeting was after she and some work friends needed a ride after attending a basketball game and a group of boys accommodated them. The vehicle was cramped; Mildred had no choice but to perch herself atop the man who would become her husband. One might say it was love at first lap.
The young couple lived on a farm in suburban St. Anthony before settling in the big city next door from Don's parents.
Mildred bore two sons, Daniel in 1949 and Patrick in 1964. When Dan's parents informed him, he would soon have a baby sister or brother after living as an only child he asked, "Can I have a car instead?"
Mildred worked as a homemaker and as the St. Anthony city clerk, a position with some measure of responsibility even in a town so small everyone knew one another's Social Security numbers. Family was her life, faith her pillar. She was baptized Lutheran, married Catholic and married again a second time into the Congregationalist Church after Donald died in 1978 and she married Robert Lathrop, who had grown up in the area, moved to Burbank, Calif., and summered in St. Anthony. Bob had by then been widowered from the daughter of Don and Mildred's next-door neighbors.
After Don's death and before marrying Bob, she returned to working as a nurse's aide and later as a cafeteria cook at West Marshall High School in State Center. She adored seeing the students as they lined up for her chili, pizza and those little A&E cartons of milk.
In retirement Mildred and Bob became snowbirds, buying a winter home in a development in Tucson, Ariz., where other family members had fled when the cold became oppressive. After Bob's death Mildred sold the Tucson and Marshalltown homes and moved to Glenwood Place back in Marshalltown. In assisted living she was a reliably cheerful presence, chiding the kitchen staff for the food they produced she claimed had too many calories (the sweets she kept spirited away may also have been a factor), playing bingo, listening to musical performances and other activities that kept her engaged and loving life.
Finally, with the clouds of dementia stubbornly not clearing and her heart failing, her family plotted to have an early 100th birthday. The staff of Glenwood and her hospice were willing and able to be co-conspirators and a grand affair it was.
She died days later confident that she had loved everyone fully for a full century. More or less.
She is survived by a son, Patrick, of Austin, Texas; two daughters-in-law, Cindy Beach of Austin and Tricia Beach of Chandler, Ariz.; six grandchildren, three great-grandchildren and one great-great grandchild.