Mary Shafer
Mary Shafer, 100, of Thebes, died Tuesday, May 11, 2021, at 1:40 a.m. at Ratliff Care Center in Cape Girardeau.
She was born on March 14, 1921, in East St. Louis, a daughter of Walter Lee and Mattie Pullem Minton. She was the second of seven children born to their union.
She married Edward Shafer on July 25, 1942, in Cape Girardeau. He preceded her in death on Oct. 30, 1966.
As a child of the Great Depression, she was no stranger to hard work. She left home at 15 to take a job on a dairy farm, where she cared for the house, twin year-old boys and cooked three meals a day for the family and crew of 12 men.
Half her wages were sent home to help support her family. This is where she learned her life’s principal of use it up, wear it out, do without and make do.
She worked a combined total of 33 years as a cafeteria cook, first at the Thebes School, and later, when the local schools consolidated, at Egyptian Community Unit School, where she retired as cafeteria supervisor in 1989.
She took pride in, and was noted for, her cooking, especially pies, cinnamon rolls and yeast rolls. Former students still remember school lunches that included hot rolls made by her.
In retirement, she took pleasure in sewing and attending Beech Grove Baptist Church in Thebes, where she was children‘s Sunday School teacher for several years. She also volunteered as church custodian.
Even into retirement, she enjoyed cooking for others.You never left her home without being fed.
She was preceded in death by her husband, Ed; her parents; a half-sister, Viola Underwood; an infant sister, Helen; brothers, Hollis Minton and Robert Minton; a niece, Mary Ellen Fugate; and nephews Thomas Smothers and Ronald Payne.
Survivors include her children, Edward E. Shafer and wife, Sharon, of Cape Girardeau, and Elizabeth McCoy and husband, Lyle, of Thebes; grandchildren Kathi Gosche (Bryan) of St. Charles, Mo., Jason Shafer (Marie) of Jefferson City, Mo., and Paula Shafer of Cincinnati, Ohio; and great-grandchildren Kayle Gosche and Eileen Shafer. She is also survived by her siblings, Thelma Smothers of Jackson, Mo., Ruth Rosenthal of Olive Branch and James Minton (Shirley) of Cape Girardeau.
Funeral services were held at 1 p.m. Monday, May 17, at Crain Funeral Home in Tamms, with the Rev. Lacey Betts officiating. Interment followed in Rose Hill Cemetery in Thebes.
Memorials can be made to the American Heart Association or to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Crain Funeral Home in Tamms was in charge of arrangements.
To view the full obituary or to leave an online condolence for the family, visit www.crainsonline.com.