Wanda Lee Land

Wanda Lee Fernimen Land lived her entire adult life by a creed of unfailing kindness, gentle humor, interest in others and generosity.

She was born in Thayer, Missouri, August 14, 1926 to Grover and Delpha Fernimen--shy, but warm, the second of four children, all girls. The family moved to Colorado before she reached school age, where they lived in several small towns finally settling in Fort Collins. She graduated from Fort Collins HS in 1944 and St. Anthony’s School of Nursing in 1947.

While working as an RN at a tuberculosis sanitorium in southern Missouri, she met her future husband, Martin Haley Land, a recovering TB patient. They married in 1950 (she tells the story of her wedding photo, of having to perch carefully atop a stack of tippy newspapers to balance her height to Martin's. That photo still rests on her dresser, still untipped), and she soon gave up professional life to be a homemaker. Over the course of that decade, she and Martin produced their four children: Virginia Ann, Marty, Tom and Steve.

As Martin's career with the Veteran's Administration Hospital system advanced, his promotions relocated the family from Missouri, to Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan and eventually, Baltimore, Maryland where they stayed for a decade and built many lasting friendships. They moved to Cheyenne in 1971 where Wanda lived for the next 48 years. She was a long-time member of Calvary Baptist Church in Cheyenne.

After 29 years of marriage, Wanda was widowed in 1979. During that sad time, she also built a rich and independent life. She traveled and formed strong bonds with neighbors, her church, and a Bible study group. She enjoyed years of monthly breakfasts with her many Cheyenne friends and her niece Denise. In 2009, Wanda moved to the Pointe Frontier Retirement Community where she showed heartfelt interest in every staff member and resident.

Wanda loved being a creative homemaker and mom, whether it was painting coathangers and wooden thread spools for Cub Scout treasure hunts, sewing annual Easter outfits, substituting a tumbleweed for a Christmas tree, preparing meals her family and friends bragged on, or writing clever ditties in her letters to charm her family.

She always loved summer vacations to Missouri to be with her Fernimen sisters, where the fun, the lively teasing and dry wit continued day and night.

She once said the reason she could relate to and enjoy everyone was because she felt like she was the age of whomever she was around.

Wanda liked a well-made, piping hot cup of coffee, ginger snaps, road trips, visiting new states for the first time, jellied orange slices, crossword puzzles over the telephone with her sister, Betty, and Schweppe's Bitter Lemon soda. She did not like thick, fluffy towels, heavy traffic (especially left-hand turns), safety pins on shirt pockets, inflexible spatulas, being late for anything, dill pickles when a sweet pickle was available, motels with "character," and the ever-shrinking size of toilet paper squares.

Her friends have said this of her:

"She was caring and capable and funny. Wanda had the most generous of hearts, and her memory was amazing-- even at 93 she would ask after each of our friends, even those she met 20 years before and hadn't seen since. She remembered everything we told her and her default setting was kindness and warmth. I felt she had a heart worth emulating. She was truly loved and will be truly missed."

"I'll miss her kindness and brilliance, and her care for people. The biggest thing she taught me is that everyone wants to be acknowledged, and shyness of others is no excuse. I will thank her for that lesson until I’m gone."

"She lived her life wisely and with grace and lots of love."

Wanda was very proud of her accomplished children and grandchildren. The pride she felt was certainly reflected back to her.

She was a nurse, just like her youngest sister, Jo. She was a friend who didn't mind splitting half a bottle of beer with you. In her later years, she used a hearing aid, a walker and she was legally blind. Yet, she found amazing ways to organize and cheerfully compensate for all these impairments up to the very last week of her life. In fact, as a passenger in your car, to help you get around she had memorized most of Cheyenne's street grid and the business locations--just like she knew the post card sent by her son two years ago would be found in the back, left side, second drawer down of her dresser, next to the light blue socks, not the dark blues.

Throughout her life, she was full of good humor. In a letter for her children to be read after her death, she wrote, “I am proud of you all. You have made my life so full, so funny (at times), and so enriched. I wouldn’t change you...well, maybe I would. ��”

Ninety-three is a good long life, but her life also ended abruptly, which makes this adjustment much harder for us. In fact, it is a shock. Wanda's own belief was that a funeral should never just be about celebrating life. It is appropriately a time for grief unmasked. So for those of you who are feeling more sad than celebratory, you have Wanda's permission to let that out and plumb its depths--for a while anyway.

Lastly, this is a time to absorb what we love about and learn from Wanda's life, and to follow the best of her habits--kindness to all, generous words and deeds, and willingness to live an active everyday creed--into our own.

She is survived by her sister Jo Walker. Her four children Virginia Ann Himmelheber, Marty Land, Tom Land and Steve Land. Grandchildren Rachel, Sarah, Addie, Emma, Brendan, Colleen, Michael (Sheehy), Tim, Michael (Modl), Andreas. Great grandchildren Ina Haley, Della Mae, Trey, Allyson, Maisie, Lola, Molly, Claire, Colin, Kit, Michael, Madison, and Tatiana. Son and daughters-in law John Himmelheber, Leanne Clarke, Betsy Land and Marietta Modl. She was preceded in death by her husband Martin, her parents Grover and Delpha and her sisters Vanita Donnelly and Betty Clark.