Ethel M. Rodden
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February 4, 2021
Ethel M. Rodden
Ethel M. Rodden, Colfax, passed away January 31, 2021, at the Whitman Health & Rehab Center in Colfax. She was 100. Graveside Services will be Friday, February 5th, at 1 pm at the Colfax Cemetery with Pastor Bob Ingalls officiating.
Ethel was born June 12, 1920, at Parma, Idaho, the oldest child, of Milton and Alexandria Dahlquist Thomason. She grew up on a small farm just north of Gooding, Idaho, and attended school in the Thorn Creek Schoolhouse, a little one-room school. Ethel helped around the farm with the horses and cattle. She also rode horses in barrel racing competition at the area rodeos. She graduated from high school in Shoshone, Idaho.
Ethel married Elzia Rodden in Jerome, Idaho, on Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 1941. While he was away in the service, she worked alongside her dad building a small house on a corner of the farm. Elzia returned from duty and they made their home there and began raising their family. She kept busy as a homemaker and mother. Elzia worked in the potato bins for Simplot.
They moved to Colfax, Wash., in 1961 where he worked for the hospital in the steam plant and she worked in the laundry at both the St. Ignatius Hospital and in the new hospital when it opened in 1968. She enjoyed fishing with her family,
teaching her kids about family values, and she was an avid seamstress. She loved baking bread and could make a meal out of nothing. In later years, she enjoyed spending time in her office doing genealogy work.
She is survived by four children: Gaylene Parmanter, Las Vegas, Nev., Geraldine (DeWayne) Gass, Colfax, Larry Rodden, Penaluma, Calif., and Lorna (Leland) Lee of Colfax; seven grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren; as well as three brothers, Tommy and Pete Thomason both of St. Maries, Idaho, Kenneth Thomason of Eugene, Ore., and by her sister, Edith Sams of Fernwood, Idaho. She was preceded in death by her husband, Elzia, in 2006, by a great-granddaughter Imelda Claire Roberts,
by two brothers Leland and Cody, and by a sister, Violet Novis.
The family suggests memorial gifts be made to the Colfax Ambulance EMT's or to Whitman Hospital Foundation. On-line guest book is at
http://www.bruningfuneralhome.com
Bruning Funeral Home of Colfax is in charge of the arrangements.
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