Clara Christine Wingert (Lichty)

SIOUX CITY -- Clara C. Wingert, 90, of Sioux City passed away Monday, Feb. 16, 2009, at a Sioux City hospital.

Services will be 10:30 a.m. Saturday at Morningside Chapel, Christy-Smith Funeral Home. Burial will be in Memorial Park Cemetery. Visitation will be 8:30 a.m. until service time Saturday at the funeral home. Condolences may be sent online to www.christysmith.com .

Clara C. Lichty was born on a farm in Fairview, Okla., on Nov. 16, 1918, to Michael and Martha (Schmidt) Lichty. She started school in Cheyenne Valley, Okla. In October 1926, the family moved to Wessington, S.D., where she attended Bothwell Country School, completing the eighth grade. During the depression, the family moved to Sioux City, where she continued her education at East High School. Following school, she went to work at the Cudahy Meat Packing Plant. She bought a farm north of Leeds in August 1941. She walked a mile on a dirt street to meet the streetcar to work.

She and Atwood J. Wingert were married on Feb. 26, 1946, in Sioux City. They milked cows together for 33 years until his death on Aug. 3, 1979.

Among the things she loved to do was to plant her garden and flowers and can the vegetables that came out of her garden. She also enjoyed making quilts, embroidering and needlework. In her later years, she collected pictures and stories of the good old days. But one of her most favorite things to do was to write her pen pal whom she had written to for 70 years. She had met this girl when her folks got stuck on a muddy road while moving to South Dakota. They stayed the night with this family on a farm near Randolph, Neb., in October 1926.

She wrote the family history of how her grandfather came from Switzerland and homesteaded and the many hardships along the way. Her articles and pictures about her family were published in the Glass Mountain Country, Major County, Okla. history book, Volume 2 produced by Major County Historical Society, copyright 2002.

On Oct. 22, 2000, she received the Oklahoma Centennial Farm Award from the Oklahoma Historical Society and the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture for still having the farm their father homesteaded in July 1899. She, her sister, Hazel, son, Darrell and daughter, Joyce, went to Enid, Okla. on Oct. 22, 2000, to receive the award. She also received a letter of congratulations from the governor of Oklahoma, Frank Keating, on behalf of the Oklahoma citizens for being one of the pioneer families to settle and farm for more than a century. The property is a cornerstone to the state of rural economy and a vital link with the history of the area for sacrifices and commitment to agriculture. She put flowers on her grandmother's grave in Pond Creek, Okla., twice a year, although they never met because she had passed away in 1901. She also had her grandmother's marker restored and polished. Every year for Memorial Day, she would put flowers on the graves of her family and friends.

She is survived by her son, Darrell Wingert of Sioux City; daughter, Joyce and her husband, Charles Sloniger of Cambridge, Iowa; granddaughter, Melissa Sloniger who is serving in the U.S. Army in Germany; a grandson, Gregg Sloniger and his wife, Magdalena of Cottonwood, Ariz.; two great-grandsons, Gage and Mason Sloniger; and a sister-in-law, Evelyn (Wingert) Wolff of South Sioux City.

She was preceded in death by her parents; her husband, Atwood, in 1979; five sisters, Ottillia Williams, Frances Snyder, Eunice Pavlishik, Hazel Lichty and Alma Grieship-Huewe; a brother, Theodore Lichty; a grandson, Mathew Sloniger; and a nephew, Floyd Dean Williams.

Memorials may be directed to Hospice of Siouxland.