Louise Pearce

Longtime Sharon Springs resident, Louise Pearce, 96, passed away Saturday, December 31, 2016 at the Wallace County Community Care Center in Sharon Springs, Kansas.

Louise Mae Evans was born on March 22, 1920, in Gove County, Kansas, to Will (Bill) and Blanche Evans. She graduated from high school and attended college in Hays, Kansas, before marrying a neighbor boy, Frank Kennett Pearce on June, 2, 1940, at her parent’s residence. They had four children: Cecil, Rita, Bryan and Evan.

She taught school in a little one-roomed school house south of Gove, Kansas, where she was a teacher, coach, and cook. Frank and Louise and their four young children moved to Wallace County, Kansas in the spring of 1950 where the family “ tore out fence and built fence” with the little boys helping Louise tamp posts, Rita guiding the “power wagon”, Cecil throwing posts from the truck, following Frank who was on the tractor drilling the posthole. Louise also began to give piano lessons. After her children were grown, she completed hours to get her teaching certificate, and said later: “Everyone needs to get their education. Then, they need to USE their education.” She started teaching music at the Harrison Flats School and Wallace Grade School and did some teaching and subbing in the Sharon Springs School, before becoming full-time teacher, band and music instructor as well as “coach” at the Wallace Grade School for many years, retiring after 20 years. Even after that, she continued to give piano lessons to many children in the area until she moved into Assisted Living at The Wallace County Community Care Center in December 2012.

She taught 6 of her own grandchildren who had to learn to call her Mrs. Pearce at school and Grandmother at family get-togethers, which sometimes confused the little first graders at the Wallace School, who also called her Grandmother at times. She spent many summers taking her grandchildren on exciting travel trips to other states, which she seemed to enjoy as much as they did.

Louise was a member of Rebekah Lodge in Wallace where she played the pump organ for meetings, a member of Busy Bee Club, and taught Sunday school for many years at the Sharon Springs United Methodist Church. She and others gathered news from the Wallace area for many years, which she continued until about 6 months before her death.

She likes to watch sports and many Friday nights in the fall she could be found parked at the Northwest Corner of the local football field in Sharon Springs, eating popcorn and sandwiches and watching former students play – although as she said about her own sons’ football years, she “watched them play just to make sure they got up again.”

At the Assisted Living in WCCCC she often played the organ on Thursday morning for all to hear and sometimes sing.

She was preceded in death by her parents, Bill and Blanche Evans, youngest son Evan Pearce, and husband Frank Pearce. Left to mourn her passing and celebrate her life is her son Cecil and wife Jayne Pearce and family, daughter Rita and husband Lynn Kirkham and family, and son Bryan and wife Lois Pearce and family, including 8 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren.

She told her family before she passed that she had had a good life, a good husband, a family that loved her and a family that she loved, and God was in control.