Funeral Services For Isabelle Schulze

Funeral services for Isabelle Schulze, age 88, of Tilden, Nebraska will be 10:30 a.m. Thursday, November 3, 2016, at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Tilden. Reverend Leon Rosenthal will officiate, with burial in Union Cemetery in Battle Creek.

Visitation will be Wednesday, November 2, 2016, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. at Brockhaus-Harlan Funeral Home in Tilden.

Isabelle died Saturday, October 29, 2016, at Heritage of Bel-Air in Norfolk, Nebraska.

Born Isabelle Fern Munger, she grew up on the Pierce County family farm where she was born in 1928. Her parents, Calvin “Chet” and Avis DeCamp Munger, farmed north of Meadow Grove.

She was the fourth of six children in a family dealing with life during the Great Depression. As a girl, she learned to sew at the side of her aunt Lucy DeCamp of Meadow Grove. She attended District 24 country school in Pierce County.

Isabelle was valedictorian and yearbook editor of her 1945 class at Meadow Grove High School. She received scholarships to Wayne State Teacher's College and Norfolk Junior College. Isabelle attended Wayne State and earned a certificate to teach country school. She also attended Wayne State during the summers of 1946 and 1947 and took classes at Norfolk Junior College in 1947.

Her first teaching job was at District 77 in Madison County in 1945-46. She was paid $1,125 for the nine-month session. There was no telephone at the school.  Her sister Marjorie would drive her to the school and then continue on to her own teaching job.

Isabelle also taught at District 24 in Pierce County and at a country school south of Meadow Grove and west of Madison. Her final teaching post was Madison County District 34 southeast of Tilden in the early 1950’s.
In June 1949, she married Tilden farmer Maynard Schulze at St. Paul (Buffalo Creek) Lutheran Church southeast of Tilden. They met when Maynard’s friend (and future brother-in-law) Edward Schutt of Meadow Grove was dating Isabelle’s sister Marjorie.

The couple lived and farmed seven miles south of Tilden in Madison County until retiring in 1989, and moving to Tilden. Isabelle regularly worked alongside her husband, raising pigs and growing corn and soybeans. She handled the farm’s bookkeeping and tax paperwork.  She was a county fair judge across northeast Nebraska for many years. Later in life, she managed her Munger family’s Pierce County farmland.

Isabelle was an avid flower gardener, continuing the hybrid iris lines adopted from her aunt Margaret DeCamp of Meadow Grove. She painted oil landscapes as a hobby for several years. She was widely known as “Is’’ or “Isy” (pronounced, Izzy).

She never turned down a cup of coffee, or a refill.

Isabelle was a leader of the Farmers Daughters 4-H Club in Madison County, particularly teaching sewing and home-living skills, for at least 20 years beginning in the early 1960s.  She was involved with the annual Make It With Wool youth-sewing competition. She taught Sunday school to 4-year-olds, and summer Bible school, at Buffalo Creek Church for at least 17 years.

She was a longtime member of the Ladies Aid organizations at Buffalo Creek and Immanuel Lutheran Church in Tilden. She was a member of the American Legion Auxiliary in Tilden, the Tilden Hospital Auxiliary and the Tri-County Extension Club.

In retirement, Isabelle took cooking, German-language and computer classes in the Tilden community. Isabelle and Maynard enjoyed attending their granddaughters’ piano recitals, softball and volleyball games and tennis matches in Omaha. They traveled from Virginia to California to visit relatives. They played countless 10-point pitch and other card games with friends and family.

Maynard died in 2007. Isabelle continued living at her Tilden home on South Elm Street until moving to Tilden’s Prairie View Assisted Living in 2015. In July, she moved to Norfolk’s Heritage of Bel-Air, where she received attentive and loving care from the staff and AseraCare Hospice nurses and volunteers.

Survivors include daughter and son-in-law, Polly and David Hendee of Omaha; granddaughter, Dana Bork of Saint Paul, Minnesota, and husband, Matthew Bork; granddaughter, Laura Hendee of Washington, D.C.; great-grandchildren, Oscar Bork and Ruby Bork of Saint Paul; brother, Donald Munger of Newman Grove and Phoenix, Arizona; sisters, Marjorie Schutt and Eileen Werner of Newman Grove; sisters-in-law, Shirley Schulze Frowick of Norfolk, Dorothy Munger of Meadow Grove, Marcella Schulze of Omaha and Lois Werner of Battle Creek; brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Nolan and Marilyn Schulze of Tilden; and many nieces, nephews and friends.

​She was preceded in death by brothers, Ivan Munger of Meadow Grove and George Munger of Indianapolis, Indiana.

The family suggests designating memorial gifts to Immanuel Lutheran Church or St. Paul (Buffalo Creek) Lutheran Church.

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