Frances Marie “Petie” Gire, 92, died Friday, Aug. 11, 2017, at Grays Harbor Community Hospital, Aberdeen. She was born the daughter of Cornelius and Lois (Ballard) Marr, the seventh of eight children, on Jan. 16, 1925, in Barberton, Wash. She moved with her family to Portland, Ore., where she attended school until her junior year in high school. The family moved to Oakland, Calif., where she finished high school and attended San Francisco State College.
She married Walter O. Warmoth, Jr. in Oakland on May 10, 1942. He was killed in World War II in 1944. On May 11, 1947, she married Milton L. Gire in Berkeley, Calif. He died in Aberdeen in 1998.
Petie was a homemaker. Her family and friends were her special passion, along with supporting her husband as he pastored American Baptist Churches in California and Washington. Over their life together they moved 17 times! Milton retired in 1988 and they settled in Aberdeen. She was involved in every aspect of the church: Sunday School teacher and superintendent, choir member and director and she served as president of the American Baptist Women of the Northwest. She was a member of the First Baptist Church in Hoquiam.
She is survived by her daughters: Emily Warmoth Duerfeldt and husband Tim, McMinnville, Ore. and Jeannene Duggin and husband Guy, Seattle; her grandchildren: Gregory Duerfeldt and Keith Selanoff, Adam and Emily Duerfeldt, Jill and Chad Bestor and Ross and Ali Duerfeldt; and great-grandchildren: Jakob, Caitlin and Von Duerfeldt. She was preceded in death by her husbands, her parents, three sisters and four brothers, and her son, David Gire in March 2017.
A memorial service will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 16, at the First Presbyterian Church on Broadway in Aberdeen.
In lieu of flowers the family suggests memorials may be made to the Milton Gire Memorial Scholarship Fund, c/o the Aberdeen Police Officers Guild, 210 E. Market St., Aberdeen, Wash. 98520.
A card of condolence with a memory or a message may be sent to the family at www.fernhillfuneral.com.
Arrangements are entrusted to Twibell’s Fern Hill Funeral Home, Aberdeen.
