STANEK, Frances
    Destiny, with resistless power, weaves the threads of life and works them into a pattern that oftimes carries the colors as reflected in the skies of many countries. The life of Mrs. Frances Stanek, that closed on Wednesday afternoon, February twenty-third, 1925, after a brief illness with pneumonia, had a tinge of the beauty of the firmament and the gloom of the clouds in far-away Bohemia, where she was born, as Frances Hrabanek, at Zasmuky, in 1940 [should be 1840], eighty-five years ago. When nineteen years of age she was married to Mr. Vaclav Stanek, a farmer, at Hrazene Rataje, in the country of their birth, and many bright and numerous somber shades went into the woof of the weaving in the years that followed. Of the eight children that blessed their union, three severed the ties of the homeland and came to America and the mother heart was heavy because of the parting. Four years after the death of her husband, in 1896, she decided to take up the long journey from Opatovice, county of Kutna, where she was living, to a reunion with her sons in America. For twenty-five years since she has shared the home of her son, Frank Stanek, and family, south of town, where she was given loving care in her declining days. She was a devout Catholic and her life rang true to her faith. The other two sons living in this country are also residents of Nebraska, Vaclav Stanek of Clarkson [Colfax County] and Jaroslav Stanek of Walthill [Thurston County], and both were here to attend the funeral which was held last Friday morning with services at St. John’s church. Rev. J. Drbal officiated at requiem mass, after which the silent sleeper in the flower-decked casket completed the last mile of her earthly journey to St. John’s cemetery where the remains were consigned to the tomb. The other surviving children of the departed who share in the condolence that goes out to the sorrowing are Mrs. Albina Picha of Cernovice and Mrs. Anna Petrasek of Petrovice, both living in Bohemia, and Anton, John and Josef Stanek, who reside at Vienna, Austria.
[The Howells Journal, Friday March 6, 1925, page 1, column 5 - submitted by Laurel Baty: laurelbaty@comcast.net]