Teacher applied her energy to gardening

4/7/2005

BRADNER, Ohio - Gladys M. Storms, a former elementary schoolteacher who filled her home garden with a wide array of vegetables, died Monday in the Hospice of Northwest Ohio, Perrysburg Township, after suffering a stroke. She was 84.

Born in Millbury, she graduated from Gibsonburg High School in the late 1930s. She worked at the former Erie Army Depot near Port Clinton during World War II and taught at an elementary school in Graytown for a few years, Nancy Risenburg, her daughter, said.

Mrs. Storms married and later enrolled at Bowling Green State University, receiving a bachelor's degree in the early 1960s. She found work teaching fifth grade at Lemoyne Elementary School in the Eastwood Local School District.

"Then they asked her to teach fourth grade and she really liked it, so she stuck with it," her daughter said. "Students at that age were eager to learn and weren't so smart-mouthed, but she would have said that more eloquently."

Mrs. Storms and her husband, Maynard, devoted much time and energy to gardening, growing tomatoes, raspberries, lettuce, and asparagus.

"My father prepared the ground, but they both did the planting and harvesting," Ms. Risenburg said. "She canned green beans and tomatoes and froze corn and squash."

Surviving are her son, Randy; daughters, Janis Curlis and Nancy Risenburg; brothers, Art, Ralph, and Benny Bruns; six grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren.

Services will be at 11 a.m. today at Bethlehem Lutheran Church, Pemberville, Ohio, where the body will be an hour before the service. Arrangements are by the Marsh Funeral Home, Pemberville. The family suggests tributes to Bethlehem Lutheran Church or the Hospice of Northwest Ohio.