Our smart, kind, important, sweet, beautiful, and loving grandmother, mother, and matriarch of the Roseworth Heil Clan, LaVaun Irene Heil, was carried to the Heavenly Gates in the arms of her loving family, to be with her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Sunday afternoon, March 14, 2021, at home, in Twin Falls, Idaho at the golden age of 100.
Funeral services will be held at 11:00 a.m., Friday, March 26, 2021 at Rock Creek Celebration Center, 320 Main Ave. North, Twin Falls. Parking is available beside and behind the venue. Burial will follow at Sunset Memorial Park. A reception of family and friends will be held following the services at 1:00pm at Rock Creek Celebration Center, 320 Main Ave. North, Twin Falls. LaVaun’s services are under the loving care of her family and Serenity Funeral Chapel & Cremation Services of Idaho, Twin Falls. Visit her tribute page at www.serenityfuneralchapel.com.
Services will be available via live video stream on our facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/eventstwinfalls
The following are LaVaun’s words from a letter written to her daughter, Julia in October of 1990 and from conversations with her granddaughter, Heidi on Sept 15, 2011. She had written a letter of their life together and sat with Heidi remembering her life with Lawrence. The letter started with their wedding day.
“When we went to get our marriage license, Lawrence asked, are you sure you want to do this? LaVaun replied, Well I don’t know, it’s up to you. Lawrence responded, Okay, then let’s go.”
“We were married July 21, 1940 at the Seventh Day Adventist Church on the corner of 3rd Ave. N. and 3rd St. N. in Twin Falls, Idaho on a Sunday afternoon with a reception following. We received a loaf of store bought white bread and a ring of bologna from Mr. and Mrs. Boepple (that was the stuff of life) and a set of the Deonne quintuplets (I suppose this was the fertility gift). We lived down on the river at the Gourley Orchard in the little white house by the creek. Lawrence did orchard work. The house had wooden steps down to a dirt cellar where I found a painting.”
The painting is hanging above her recliner in her room at the assisted living. It is in a horizontal rectangle shaped frame and is of a tree lined lane along a stream.
“From there we moved to Richmond, Calif. and Lawrence became an instant carpenter. After about a year and a half, we had so much money we thought we were rich. We had a roll of $100 bills big enough to choke a horse. We bought a 1941 Chevrolet and a 16 foot trailer house. We moved in the trailer and parked ½ block from the railroad tracks. I was expecting Julia at the time. We didn’t sleep for a week, but after that we didn’t even hear the train.”
“We moved from there to Santa Maria, Calif. Where Julia was born on Jan 18, 1942. In the meantime, Irene and Eldon Jenicke joined our team and he and Lawrence began hanging sheetrock. From there we moved to Florence, Arizona and Helen and Bill Heil joined us. We all five lived in the little trailer next to a service station. I had to go over there and rinse out the baby diapers in the sink as we had no hot water. Finally, Helen and Bill got an apartment and moved out. From there, we moved back to California to Marysville and moved in with Helen and Bill and her brother, Dale. We finished there, sold the trailer, and moved to Medford, Oregon. By that time, my dad and brother, Art, were in the sheetrock business with us together, so we bought forty acres out of town. All of this moving was going on during World War II. Lawrence had been exempted for bad lungs.”
“After the war, the building slowed down and Lawrence decided he was going to be a logger. After a few bad experiences, I told him if he didn’t quit I was going to divorce him. I didn’t want to spend every day worrying about him all day, so he quit and we moved back to Idaho. We rented my dad’s farm south west of Twin Falls. We traded the car for a trailer and an old truck to Don and Lucille Shelly. We bought some Holstein calves and started farming. After dad and mother came back from Oregon, we rented a bigger place south of Kimberly. We lived in town, and one day Julia was out playing and she came home pulling a little wagon from down the block. She had borrowed it from a little friend, so Edward and she took it back. I was expecting a baby then and Julia and I used to ride the train to Twin Falls to the doctor. It was called the Galloping Goose.”
“That baby only lived 3 ½ weeks. We moved back to dad’s ranch with them. Dad was very ill with bleeding ulcers and died just six weeks after Larry was born in 1944. We moved from there to Wendell and mother sold the farm. At Wendell, we farmed potatoes in the sand.”
The baby’s name was Gerald Arthur Heil, born on Aug. 29, 1943 and died on Sept. 21, 1943 of jaundice. Larry Chester Heil was born on Aug. 23, 1944. LaVaun recalled that a Mrs. Dorothy Tetz cared for Larry as a baby when he had jaundice and kept him alive. There was a stillborn baby, Curtis Ray Heil on Feb. 17, 1946.
“We rented eighty acres in Roseworth in the Spring of 1946 and moved in with mother, who had bought a house on 5th Ave. East in Twin Falls. We bought the now Davis’s place at Roseworth and then sold it to the Davis’s the next year and moved up to the place below Rogers and farmed that place. Then we got bigger and rented the Arness’s, or the now Rogers’s place. We stayed there for two years and then we bought the John Smith place which is where we have been since 1950. The kids grew up there and so did the grandchildren, and before we knew it, fifty years had gone by. We had grown an empire. We ranched 3000 head of sheep for fifteen years and 1200 cattle, and had 10,000 deeded acres of land and 750 acres of farm ground. We raised the sheep and then switched to cattle as our son, Larry, didn’t want to raise sheep. 1n 1989 we sold the ranch and sold the farm ground to our son, Larry. We retired on the Oregon Coast, fishing in the summer. We spent our winters in California, Arizona, and Mexico.” Larry sold the farm and feedlot at Roseworth in 2006 and moved to Gooding with his wife, Marcella.
Most of the above quotes came from the letter LaVaun wrote to Julia in 1990, with a few inserts from her conversations with Heidi Heil in Sept of 2011. The following fills in some more details from those conversations.
In the 1950’s, Lawrence started fishing on a charter boat in Oregon on their vacations. He decided to buy his own boat so he could stay out and fish as long as he wanted. Julia and Larry would turn green out on the boat. Fishing on the ocean was just not for them. Lawrence bought his first fiberglass boat and named it Roseworth. He later bought another boat and named it Roseworth II. Lawrence and LaVaun spent their time on the coast in a motor home, fifth wheel, and later bought a mobile home at Bay City, Oregon. In August of 1972, they had the Roseworth III built. In June of 1973, they had another boat built in Florida. It was named the Apache. They went to Florida with a small trailer to tow it back to Oregon and were told that if they hit the brakes hard that the boat would be in the cab of their truck. They had to pay $5,000 to have the boat commercially transported back to Oregon. This boat later gave way to the Apache II and Apache III. They were both fiberglass boats that they had purchased. They captained and fished on the Apache III out of Garibaldi, Oregon. When they weren’t on the ranch or out on the coast, Lawrence and LaVaun spent their winters in California, Arizona, and Mexico. For many years they spent their winters at Desert Hot Springs just outside of Palm Springs, California. LaVaun moved home to be cared for in assisted living by her family. Lawrence followed later to live with family in Gooding to be near LaVaun. They spent two years in assisted living together. Lawrence died in 2013. They were married 71 years.
Heidi's thoughts: Grandma loved her card games and spent numerous hours playing Skip-Bo, Uno, and many others with her grandkids and family. She raised us all in the Adventist Church with fun outings every Saturday after church. Many a days were spent rummaging for treasures at thrift stores, of which she had numerous. She was a master cook for all of her family and ranch employees. No one could whip out a traditional German Easter dinner like grandma LaVaun. She loved Easter and the true meaning behind it. Game shows, daytime, and nighttime soap operas, the Animal Planet, Bob Villa, painting shows, you name it, she was a great fan. She had Heidi hooked on Days of Our Lives by the age of 5 and it is still a daily routine for her granddaughter. She always had a warm bed for her grandchildren to crawl into and gave amazing back scratches. Her niece, Barb, owns a cabin at Priest Lake, Idaho and she took all of her grandchildren every summer for many years, always stopping off at her sister, Irene's at College Place, Washington to rest for the night and harvest fruits and vegetables for our stay at the cabin. And oh how she loved the sun, quite the bathing beauty! She and her sisters always took us for a late night skinny dip at the cabin too! Such awesome memories of Priest Lake! Family was everything to Grandma LaVaun and she never gave anything but love and acceptance. She would pamper us grandkids and great-grand kids like none other. Our depth of love and gratitude for all she instilled in us we will carry on. Love for family, the Lord, and humanity is the legacy, we as her family will perpetuate in her honor. She taught us the greatest lesson of all, living life by the Golden Rule.
LaVaun maintained her health and mobility to nearly 100 years old. We were unable to celebrate her 100th in person due to Covid-19, but celebrated it outside her assisted living room. Last month the whole family came together to visit grandma in person and celebrate her 100th, a few at a time, but in the room with her. We were able to share our love and gratitude to our magnificent grandmother. Her health declined considerably shortly after and family brought her home to be cared for surrounded by her loved ones in her final days. Her passing was beautiful, and set her free of her earthly pain. Her unwavering faith in Jesus Christ will hold her peacefully until we meet again.
Survivors:
Children:
Julia “Tootie” Heil Sullivan, Twin Falls, Idaho
Larry and Marcella Hedberg Heil, Gooding, Idaho
Gerald Heil, infant son, Deceased
Curtis Heil, infant son, Deceased
Grandchildren:
Terri Clark Kaminski, Bainbridge Island, Wash.
Francie (Kevin) Clark Lenane, Hailey, Idaho
Amie Clark, Meridian, Idaho
Stacee Heil Parke, Gooding, Idaho
Shellee Heil Shaw, Gooding, Idaho
Heidi Heil, Twin Falls, Idaho
Great Grandchildren:
Cameron Kaminski, Los Angeles, Calif.
Kendall (Molly Coffyn) Kaminski, Incline Village, Nevada
Taylor Lenane, Hailey, Idaho
Ryan (Jessica) Cardoza, Meridian, Idaho
Gunnar (Jamie Leatherbury) Fehrer, Meridian, Idaho
Kaden Fehrer, Meridian, Idaho
Justin (Amanda Smith) Parke, Middleton, Idaho
Jared Parke, Gooding, Idaho
Jett Parke, Gooding, Idaho
Tacee Shaw, Cardston, Alberta, Canada
Jade Shaw, Cardston, Alberta, Canada
Bradee Heil, Twin Falls, Idaho
Laramee Laredo Heil, Twin Falls, Idaho
Zeauxee Belle Heil, Twin Falls, Idaho
Harlee Quinn Heil, Twin Falls, Idaho
Great Great-Grandchildren:
Tristan Cardoza, Meridian, Idaho
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