Homer resident Lulu Ware Middleton, 97, died Aug. 1, 2007, at the family’s homestead near Fritz Creek. A funeral and reception will be at 1 p.m. today at Homer United Methodist Church. The Rev. Don Strait will officiate. Pallbearers will include Joe and Russ Graham, Eric Shafford, Bob Mansfield, Nick Bezzerides and Sam Newman. Lu was born Sept. 14, 1909, to Herbert and Mary Ware in Sharptown, N.J., and was raised on her parents’ tomato farm near Woodstown, N.J. She graduated from Woodstown High School and from Rutgers Business School. She went to work at Dupont Chemical Co. in Salem, N.J., and met her future husband, Henry Middleton. They married in 1932 and lived in New Jersey until moving to the West Coast in 1939. In 1944 they returned to New Jersey. In May 1948, the couple traveled the Alaska Highway to homestead in Alaska. They settled in the Fritz Creek area, on a homestead where she lived for 59 years and where many of her family still reside. Lulu and Henry raised seven children in a tiny log cabin. Lu managed the family’s subsistence farm, while Henry worked as an electrician on Bush jobs. Lu volunteered at the Pratt Museum in Homer for 20 years. Her family remembers her as “a devoted wife, mother and eternally lovable grandmother. We will never forget her lovely smile, her patience, or her devilish sense of humor. She enjoyed taking on all comers in a lively game of pinochle or Scrabble, always had a knitting project in the works, and set the standard very high with her homestead soup, pies and bread. Grandma Lu was always ready to set one more place at the dinner table for stoppers-by and remained a gracious hostess and a great lady throughout her long life.” Lu is survived by her sons and daughters-in-law, Henry of Homer, Jeff and Janet of Homer, Tim and Joyce of Anchorage, and Herb and his fiancee, Sharon, of Harrogate, Tenn.; and daughters and sons-in-law, Jane Middleton of Homer, Pam and Steve Hooker of Anchorage and Cindy and Lynn Graham of Homer. She had twelve grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations be made to the Pratt Museum, 3779 Bartlett St., Homer 99603. Visit the online memorial at legacy.com

Source:  Anchorage Daily News (AK) – Tuesday, August 7, 2007