Geraldine F. Stanford, age 90, a resident of St. Charles for 40 years, went to be with the Lord, on Sunday, November 8, 2015, peacefully at home. She was born February 23, 1925 to Clyde Howard and Alice Marie, nee Bakkela, Bedal. They lived in Brainerd, MN while Gerry attended schools in northeast Brainerd and southeast Brainerd.

Gerry graduated from Washington Senior High School, where she was awarded the Josten Award for good citizenship. She played the viola in the orchestra, wrote for the Brainonian Newspaper weekly, edited the Brainonian annual yearbook and played piano accompaniment for the Washington Senior High School Choir. Gerry was a senior in high school when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Most of her classmates joined the armed forces. No one from the class was lost in service.

Gerry traveled to Pasadena, CA to help her aunt Helen Quinlen whose husband was lost in the Philippines. While Helen worked at the defense plant, Gerry cared for her three children. While in Pasadena, Gerry attended Pasadena Junior College, East Campus. After two years she met Ralph H. Stanford who attended the West Campus. During his second year, Ralph was called into the U.S. Army. He went from the Air Force to the Medical Corps. When he was informed that he was going overseas, Ralph asked Gerry to marry him. They were married on June 4, 1944 by Dr. J. Vernon McGee.

After moving to St. Charles, Gerry worked for 20 years as an English Teacher at Geneva High School. She was a member of the IL Retired Teachers Association and the Delta Kappa Gamma teachers association. She and Ralph were active members of the Wheaton Evangelical Free Church, where she was a deaconess, played the organ and piano, and was a member of the Kupples Klass. They enjoyed travel and traveled to Austria, Italy, Spain, Finland, Milan, Amsterdam, Paris, Alaska, Australia, Turkey, Greece, and Switzerland.

Gerry loved to play the piano and enjoyed writing. She prayed daily for many people and was outgoing and cared for her neighbors. She enjoyed interior decorating and making her home a beautiful place.

Her favorite verse was Colossians 1:10-11: And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light.

She is survived by her daughters, Meredith (Kent) Stanford-Pollock of Bolton, Massachusetts and Roberta Stanford of St. Charles, and nieces and nephews. She was precede in death by her husband, Ralph and one sister, Margery Collins.

A visitation will be held on Saturday, November 21, from 10:00 until the time of a funeral service at 11:00 a.m. at Compass Church in Wheaton (Wheaton Evangelical Free Church) 520 E. Roosevelt Rd., Wheaton, IL 60187. Interment will follow at Union Cemetery in St. Charles, Illinois.

Memorial gifts may be directed to MedSend ( www. medsend .org)

Family and friends may sign a guest book at hultgrenfh.com. For more information, please call Hultgren Funeral Home at 630-668-0027.