Edna Reeder

A memorial service for Edna Reeder will be held on April 1st at 2’oclock at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Boise. She departed this life on March 21, 2025. 

Mrs. Reeder, a homemaker, was the eldest daughter of Heinrich Wilhelm Rathert and Karoline Wilhelmina Schneider Rathert, German immigrants. She was born on the family farm north of Valley Falls, Kansas, on May 4,1927, and was educated in Jefferson and Atchison County schools. The grade school was a one-room school in the neighborhood. She graduated from the Atchison County Community High School in Effingham, Kansas in 1945. After graduation, she moved to Omaha, Nebraska and was employed by Mutual of Ohama and Orchard-Wilhem.  

After several years she moved to Topeka, Kansas where she was employed by Hali Lithographing and Western Typewriter Company. While employed in Omaha and Topeka, she appreciated and enjoyed membership in Beta Sigma Phi, a national businesswomen’s sorority.   

She met Louis Albert Reeder in Topeka in June of 1947. After a year of courtship, they were married on May 23, 1948, at the St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church in Nortonville, Kansas. They moved to Boise, Idaho after the 1951 Topeka flood. 

She became a member of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in 1951 where she was a member of the Altar Guild, the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League, and served for thirty years as the Church secretary. After St. Paul’s closed, she became a member of the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church. She was also a member of the Franklin School PTA, the Mesa Garden Club, and the Western Idaho Model T Club. 

Survivors include her children and their spouse: Greg and Sandra Reeder, Mary and Jim McCallum, David and Gayla Reeder, and Elizabeth and Austin Warner. She is also survived by 8 grandchildren, 11 great grandchildren, her sister and brother-in-law, Mary and Wilbur Boyce of Valley Falls, Kansas and numerous nieces and nephews. 

She was preceded in death by her husband of 63 years on June 2, 2011, two brothers, Carl and Emil Rathert and two sisters, Margaret Griffith and Dorothea Bell. 

Special thanks to her dear neighbors John, Laurel, Shawn and Jim for the coffee mornings and friendship.  

The family will greet friends immediately following the service in the Fellowship Hall of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church. Memorials may be made to Good Shepherd Lutheran Church 5009 Cassia, Boise, Idaho 83705.