Obituary of Lois "Bonnie" Lavonne Malcom

Lois Lavonne (Bonnie) Malcom passed away January 10, 2017, at the Lincoln Community Nursing Home in Hugo, Colorado, at 88 years of age. She had several health issues including very limited mobility, and cancer, which she first contracted in 1983. She also incurred a head injury from a fall on Christmas night. Lois was born November 25th, 1928, in Bloom, Kansas, the last of six children born to Clyde and Adra Mabel (Hoover) Shinogle. She grew up in and around the Bloom, and Minneola, Kansas, area as her dad worked for the natural gas company there. During her growing up years Bonnie had a very loving family, and was especially close to her mother. Money was hard to come by in those days. She and her siblings often went barefoot in the summer, and there was not much for gifts at Christmas time—usually a sack of hard candy for the family to share. Bonnie spoke of using a piece of fencepost to fashion a doll for playing. In the summer of 1943 the Shinogle family moved to a farm ten miles north of Limon, Colorado. Bonnie said they left a nice house in Bloom, owned by the gas company, and came out to Colorado to nothing more than a shack. She felt sorry for her mother because of that, but they made improvements and made do. Bonnie attended school in Limon during her high school years, graduating in 1947. She was a homecoming attendant, always enjoyed music, and started dating the neighbor boy, Lester Malcom, while attending Limon High. Immediately after graduating from high school Lois and Lester got married, on June 8th, 1947, and settled in to farm life on a place about three miles from her parents’ home. Shortly thereafter her parents sold their place and moved back to Minneola. Bonnie and Lester spent the next 68 years living on the farm, where Bonnie enjoyed helping with chores and other farm work, gardening, raising chickens, playing the piano, collecting rocks and barbed wire, growing flowers, and raising a family. It was always special to her to make trips back to Kansas to visit her parents and other family members. She and Lester had three sons: Daryl, Terry, and Randy. The farm was successful and as the years went by, it grew. Bonnie enjoyed life on the farm and harvest time, and watching her boys grow up. She made many trips to summer baseball practice, piano lessons, 4-H activities, community gatherings at Walk’s Camp Park, church services, and school events. Even though Bonnie preferred home over social life, she did a lot to give her boys every opportunity to do things. Bonnie was a stickler for details. She was always quick to follow doctor’s orders, insisted her sons complete 4-H books exactly as required, wanted to eat at precisely the same time every day, and pressed for any school project to be neat, straight, and correct. She was good at needlework, cooking, Bible study, and mowing the yard throughout most of her life. In her later years she enjoyed jigsaw puzzles, visiting the coffee ladies at Ruby’s, going out to eat, and watching TV. She and Lester also enjoyed travelling some, often with her brother Claude and wife Jean. She supported her kids and grandkids in all their activities, and seldom missed any event. She and Lester received the Limon High School Outstanding Alumnus Award in 2000, and the Honorary L Club Award in 2008. She was a member of the Seventh Day Adventist Church. Lois was preceded in death by her husband, Lester, their infant son, Daryl, by her parents Clyde and Mabel Shinogle, her sisters Nadine (Roy) McGee, Twila (George) Elstrom, Katherine (Boots) Parks, and by her brother Jack (Clemon) Shinogle. She is survived by sons Terry (Naomi) and Randy (Peggy), by her brother Claude (Jean) Shinogle, by six grandchildren, eleven great grandchildren, and several nieces and nephews.