Velma Jane (Leach) McKnight

Funeral services for Velma Jane (Leach) McKnight, who died on April 19 will be held on April 23, 2015 at 2pm at Dugan-Kramer Funeral Chapel with Stanley Morrison and Doug Ogden officiating. Burial will be after the service at East Lawn Cemetery. Visitation will be Wednesday from 1-7 p.m. at the chapel. Tributes of sympathy may be left at www.dugankramer.com.

Velma, age 99 years young, would have turned 100 on June 10. She was born in 1915 in Gordon, NE to John and Ada (Wilkey) Leach. She professed in Harold Hollingsworth and Willie Kleffman’s meeting in a tent in Gordon, NE on August 11, 1931 at the age of 16. Until this very day, she epitomizes the love and faith that encompasses that vow.

She married Kenneth McKnight Sr. on September 12, 1949 in Gering, NE. She taught school for eleven years in Sheridan County and for 22 ½ years in Scottsbluff and Sioux Counties.

Velma and Ken raised their four children and farmed in the Lake Alice District from 1956 to 1978. Upon semi-retirement, they sold their farm and made their home in Scottsbluff where she took a very active role in her grandchildren’s lives, including but not limited to, never-ending Grandma care, helping with school, teaching them to drive, along with providing relationship advise in their formidable years and onward. She shared her home, her values, and her unconditional love with all who knew her.

Survivors include her sons Harold McKnight, Jack and his wife Ruth McKnight; daughter Ada and her husband Duane Walker; and Daughter-in-law Diana McKnight. Her grandchildren include, Melissa and Jon Pfeiffer, Michael McKnight, Jennifer and Ulysses Mafnas, Melanie and Gary Schumacher, Mirandie and Jon Peterson, Wade and Dalayna McKnight, and Waylen and Megan McKnight. Velma has seventeen great grandchildren and three great-great grandsons. She is also survived by her Brother-in-law JC McKnight, and Sisters-in-law Wanda Laws and Wilma Bone as well as numerous nieces and nephews and many many friends.

Velma was preceded in death by her husband Ken, her son Kenneth Thomas Jr, grandson Blaine Lee Walker, her mother and father, her six brothers, Virgil, Bob, Bert, Joe, Dick and Johnnie, and her five sisters, Hazel, Daisy, Dorothy, Kathryn, and Geneva.