Magner, Norma E.

BIRTH 24 Jun 1924
Sturgis, Meade County, South Dakota, USA

DEATH 9 Jun 1972 (aged 47)
Rapid City, Pennington County, South Dakota, USA

BURIAL
Forest Hill Cemetery
Duluth, St. Louis County, Minnesota, USA

Norma Anderson was born June 24, 1924 in Sturgis SD to Earl Anderson and Helen Handlin. She was the daughter of the man who ran Anderson Hardware in Sturgis. She attended St Martins Academy in Sturgis and graduated from the University of South Dakota. Norma came to Rapid City in 1945 and went to work for KOTA radio. Where she met her future husband.. She was married to Bill Magner June 6,1946 in Sturgis. She was very active in charity work in both Flint Michigan and in Rapid City.

Her daughter remembers her as fiercely loving, who indulged her and let her stay home from school when she wasn't sick. She was affectionate, tender and magnetic to her daughter.

She was not always well and had two heart attachs while her children were still young.

On the night of the flood Elizabeth and her husband had gone to a neighbors to a cocktail party leaving Jeff and Merlyn at home, the parents called several times and were keeping an eye on the weather out side.

Merlyn and her brother Jeff attempted to get up on the roof of their house, Jeff got up Merlyn didn't. He was swept off the roof and she was swept out of the house. AT one point she saw her parents on the roof of the house near by and she could tell her mother saw her and probably her brother being swept away, probably just before he was also.

She is survived by a son William Magner II serving in Vietnam with the Air Force. He came back at the time of the flood and was the one who went looking for his parents and brother in the makeshift morgues set up around town using rental trucks to transport the dead to refrigerator trucks, and a daughter Merlyn who in 2011 wrote her story of the flood and its aftermath called ‘Come Into the Water". Also a sister Mildred Dunn of Newport Pennsylvania.

William Magners body was found and identified very early but his wife's body was found a week or so later on the East side of town. Burial of her casket had already taken place and Meryln never knew what happened to her body once it was identified by dental records.