Obituary: Birdsall, Shirley (Barber)
Age 80
on April 10, 1933 to Loren and Vada Barber.
After Vada died in 1943, Loren married Vada’s relative Ida Offield.
Her siblings are Dorothy Bloxom of Sandpoint, Idaho, Duane Offield of El Cerrito, CA., and Don Offield, a volunteer firefighter who died in a crash, while fighting a grass fire.
A brother, Gordon, died from measles.
Shirley married Duwaine Birdsall on June 27, 1958.
They ran a dairy farm outside Grandview, before moving to raise concord grapes, cherries, hay, and apples.
Shirley worked at Benton County Courthouse, then at Champson-Lampson Insurance.
Her scalloped potatoes, cowboy cookies and pineapple cake were a hit.
Later, she and Duwaine moved to the pine hills north of Spokane.
Despite cancer and other ills, she smiled often her last year.
Shirley died March 28, 2013.
She is survived by son Doug, his wife Jeannie of Grandview, their daughter Lacey and son Cody; daughter Denise and her husband Mike Lindblom of Seattle and their daughers Claire and Rose; and son David, his wife Leesa, and their sons Loren and Steven in Spokane.
Says Leesa: “My ever joyful, never complaining, tough-as-nails, precious mother-in-law, Shirley.
Her middle name is Jewel, and that is what she was.
This woman was a friend and another mother.”
A memorial is planned April 10 at Prosser Memorial Cemetery.