Edna Ziegler

Edna Frances Richardson was born May 18, 1929, on a farm in Vernon Township, Clinton County, Ohio, to Herman L. Richardson and Bessie Olive (Murphy) Richardson. Today, the farm lies below the waters of Cowan Lake. Some of her family had lived in Clinton County for most of the 19th century. An ancestor founded Villars Chapel, now a United Methodist Church.

After losing the farm in the Great Depression, her parents moved to rural Carthage, Illinois, where other family members lived. Here, Edna graduated from high school and attended Western Illinois State University (Macomb) where she met Donald L. Ziegler (1921-2000).

On June 4, 1949, she married Don at the Methodist Church in Carthage. During the 1950’s Don and Edna gave birth to two daughters, Marilyn Ziegler Perry, CPA, of Anoka, Minnesota, and Cynthia Z. Buttler (Cindy), a retired Registered Nurse, of Wyoming, Minnesota. The family lived in a house that Don and Edna built in Olympia Gardens, Illinois, and attended the First Methodist Church and the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago Heights. They also cared for two foster daughters in the 1970’s. Edna made Marilyn’s wedding dress when she married Stephen Perry and tatted Cindy’s bridal headpiece when she married Al Buttler. Edna also knitted, crocheted, quilted, and taught school.

Edna and Don enjoyed traveling and took their children to many parts of the United States. They pulled Airstream trailers numbered 19803. After Don’s retirement in 1980 from teaching at Bloom Township High School, they lived for many years in their trailer. As members of the Wally Byam Caravan Club and International Caravaning Association, they visited Mexico, Europe, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa. They square danced across the country, and she operated a ham radio with call letters EKB0KAM.

The births of their grandchildren, Andrew (Andy) Eric Lyman-Buttler, now a second-year medical student at the University of Minnesota, in 1983, and Meghan Elizabeth Buttler, now a cook in Duluth, in 1990, drew them to the Twin Cities. In later years they spent summers at Land Yacht Airstream Park, Clear Lake, and winters at Travelers Rest Resort, Dade City, Florida. They purchased an Anoka townhome condominium in 1997 where Don died on December 29, 2000.

Edna became active in Anoka United Methodist Church and organized the congregation’s participation in Meals on Wheels for many years after Don died. Until a few days before her own death, she prayed with the prayer chain and made telephone calls as part of the church’s efforts to keep in touch during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Edna died peacefully on August 27, 2020, of congestive heart failure and frailty that immobilized her during her last days. She spent these days in her own home under the care of her family, Angel Helpers, Comfort Keepers of Anoka, and Fairview Lakes Hospice.

She lived to see her great grandson, William Alan Lyman-Buttler, son of Andy and Wendy Lyman-Buttler, born and enter school. Meghan remembers her as “a warm, wonderful woman who laughed easily, gave readily and cared deeply. She valued the beauty of everyday things—a hummingbird at her bird feeder, a bloom on her orchids, a perfect hand of pinochle, a clever cryptoquip in the newspaper, a win for the Twins. The glow of her love touched us all, and in remembering all the memories we shared together, we will still feel that glow, always.”