Grace Cook McOmber

1923 - 2025

Grace C. McOmber, 101, of Fremont, California, died Tuesday morning, March 11, 2025, in an elder care home at 48 West 39th Avenue in San Mateo, California after a short respiratory illness. She was born Lulu Grace Cook in Rexburg, Idaho on November 30, 1923 to Wiley Delmoe Cook and Lulu May Munns. The third oldest of 11 children, she spent her youth on a farm in Archer, just south of Rexburg, helping her mother care for the younger ones and tended a large kitchen garden. She was also "daddy's little helper," working with her siblings to top sugar beets and care for farm animals. To her great disappointment, she could not attend school when she turned six because she was born too late in the year. Instead, during her sixth year, she learned the Three Rs under her mother's tutelage as they pulled weeds in the garden. In her later years when she started writing her autobiography, she titled it, "Born Too Late."

At 19 she began her higher education at Ricks College in Rexburg, but soon withdrew to help her mother with the birth of another child. Then her older brother Cecil suggested she come down to Pocatello, about an hour away, to go to work, and also to meet a certain young man Cecil had met while working for Calvin D. McOmber. She and Adrian McOmber were quite attracted to each other. After they dated a short while, since he had been classified by the military during WWII as 4F because he had flat feet, he served as a missionary in the Central States Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for two years. They wrote to each other, she worked at Garrett Freight Lines in Pocatello, used her newly acquired skills at shorthand and typing to take dictations when her future father-in-law gave patriarchal blessings, and she and Adrian got married shortly after he returned in 1944.

After a short stay in Pocatello, during which time their first child, a son, was born, they moved to Logan, Utah where Adrian got a degree in Agricultural Science from Utah State College. Their second son was born there. Adrian then began work as a soil scientist for the US Government, testing soil compacting in earthen dams. This took the family to Grand Junction Colorado, Rock Springs Wyoming, and Fort Hall, Idaho. When a transfer came to Saudi Arabia, Adrian resigned and went back to school at Idaho State College in Pocatello, getting a degree in high school teaching. Grace became very busy, as two more sons and a daughter were born there.

In 1955, the family moved to Hayward, California for a short time, and then to Niles, which soon became part of Fremont. Adrian taught high school in Hayward and San Leandro, and Grace busied herself with gardening, child raising, giving birth to two more sons and another daughter. As in Idaho, she volunteered once again for church work as a teacher of young children in Primary, and as an organist, pianist, and choir member for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at the Temple Way Building a block down the street. She served long and faithfully there and in the women's organization in the Church, the Relief Society.

She was active in the local schools' PTAs, was a community organizer for various worthwhile local causes, befriended many a stranger and even took in a couple of them who needed help. She supported her children who served missions for the Church. They went to Hong Kong, Canada, Italy, Chile, France and San Diego. After the kids had all grown up and left home, she went back to school, taking various classes of interest at Ohlone Junior College in Fremont.

Grace loved her numerous Cook and McOmber relatives and faithfully remembered their birthdays with a card and a letter. She was an avid genealogist and also kept in contact with a wide range of her and her husband's relatives for family history purposes, compiling pedigree charts and genealogy books from her mounds and mounds of information. In this pursuit, she was always writing letters, far and wide.

Shortly after Adrian died in 2005, the old homestead at 1721 Horner Way in Fremont was sold and she moved to a retirement home in Fremont, with help from her children who lived nearby. When the nearby ones moved, she relocated to San Mateo to a retirement home where one of her doctor sons and his wife, who lived close by, could care for her.

Mrs. McOmber is survived by six sons, Douglas Adrian of Carlsbad CA, Logan Clair of Foster City CA, Gail Cook of Sandy UT, Earl David of Orem UT, Kent Munns of Brentwood CA, and Mark Stout of Orem UT, and by one daughter, Carol of Sun City, AZ. She is survived by her brother, Renell W. "Bill" Cook of Rexburg, ID, and by 22 grandchildren, 49 great-grandchildren, and 21 in-laws. She was preceded in death by her husband Adrian Stout McOmber in 2005 and her daughter Ann McOmber in 2006.

Services have been held.