Verna Greeno was born April 28, 1924, in Haig, Nebraska. She was the youngest of three surviving children born to Carl and Aurora Simianer.

One of her earliest childhood memories was helping to prepare her baby brother’s body for burial because her whole family was under mandatory quarantine for meningitis. Shortly after this, her mother gave birth to a baby girl. That child died a few months later.

Growing up as a child during the Great Depression, her parents moved frequently as her father searched for jobs to support his family. She often had to change schools. One of the one room schools she attended was at the base of Chimney Rock. She was able to complete eighth grade but due to distance and lack of transportation, she was unable to attend high school. She remembers crawling on her knees working in beet fields alongside her parents.

At the age of 16 she met her future husband, Louis, at a nearby CC Camp. They were married on May 31, 1941, just a month past her 17^th birthday.

Within a couple years, Louis was drafted into the Army Air Corps and by the time he was deployed overseas to England, they already had a son, Charles, and Verna was pregnant with her second child, a girl named Peggy, whom she delivered 6 months later. Louis was overseas just past 2 years while Verna raised two toddlers by herself. There was no social media or even phone calls between spouses back then. The only form of communication was handwritten and often censored letters. For more than a year she didn’t have knowledge of his location.

Louis returned to the States in 1945 and was awaiting orders to be deployed to Japan when the Atomic Bomb ended World War Two.

Louis and Verna returned to farming in Nebraska at which time their third child, a daughter named Dian, was born.

In 1953 they left farming behind and moved their family to Springfield, Mo. where Louis became a carpenter.

After all their children left home, Louis and Verna took square dancing lessons and that became a big part of their lives.

Approximately 20 years after moving to Springfield they semi-retired and moved to Shell Knob where they began to build their dream home near the lake as they continued to enjoy square dancing.

Before they could finish the home, they were building, Louis developed lung cancer and died a few short months later in 1977 leaving Verna a widow at 53 years old. Not having a high school diploma, she went to work as a teacher’s aide in Cassville. She also studied and received her GED.

Having sold her unfinished house, she later returned to Springfield and eventually began working for the American red Cross. Her employment there lasted 14 years. She worked in many different areas there before landing her favorite job of driving a van delivering blood products to hospitals in the three-state area. She never missed a day driving due to illness or bad weather and continued driving until age 72.

One of her proudest accomplishments was being added to the Wall of Fame at the Community Blood Center for donating 26 gallons of blood.

Verna was able to live alone in her apartment in Willard until just prior to her 99^th birthday which she celebrated with family and friends at Woodland Manor.

Verna was preceded in death by her older sister, Irene Wason in 1990 and her other brother, Orville G. Simianer in 2008. A funeral service will be held at 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, January 6, 2024, at Greenlawn Funeral Home North. Burial will follow in Greenlawn Memorial Gardens.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to disabled veterans or to Jerry’s Kids for Muscular Dystrophy.