Ellis Schrunk, 92 of Bartlett, NE passed away peacefully at his home Tuesday, July 16, 2024, following a brief illness with Acute Myeloid Leukemia
Funeral services were held at 10:00 a.m. Saturday, July 20, 2024 at Trinity Lutheran Church in Elgin, NE with Rev. Norlyn Bartens officiating. Interment followed at Park Cemetery, rural Elgin, NE. Visitation was held 5-7 p.m. Friday at the church, with a 7 p.m. Service of Remembrance.
Memorials are suggested to the Wheeler County Foundation Fund or to the family for later designation.
Levander Funeral Home of Elgin, NE is in charge of arrangements.
Condolences may be sent to the family at www.levanderfuneralhome.com.
*****
Ellis Velern Schrunk was born August 1, 1931, to Earl and Gertrude (Schober) Schrunk at the Schrunk’s rural home southwest of Ewing.
He was the first of eight children born to Earl and Gertrude. He attended grade school, just turning 5, at District I walking or driving the pony cart with his siblings. At a young age he helped with the milking, chores, and raising pigs.
One of his money-making projects was trapping mink and muskrat on the Clearwater Creek. He attended Wheeler County High School and graduated with the class of 1948. Ellis stayed in the Boy’s Dormitory, which was a county boarding school, during his high school years coming home only on weekends.
Although he had lost fingers in a farming accident during his sophomore year, he participated in chorus, band, basketball, track and softball. He enjoyed music and took vocal solos to the District Music Contest. One of the high school stories, discovered in his box of memory items, was a notebook with notes from one of his classes. The book had a pocket with a note saying, for anyone borrowing his notes, to deposit money. That must have been the easiest way for his classmates to avoid taking notes themselves. After graduation Ellis stayed home for 5 years to help his parents and continue the hog raising business and trapping. He was also a 4-H leader.
Ellis dated Lois Rossow, a Wheeler County High School 1949 graduate, for 3 years. When Lois decided to quit teaching, they began planning a wedding. Ellis and Lois were married on October 11, 1953, at Trinity Lutheran Church in Elgin. After a honeymoon to Colorado, they moved to a 400-acre farm/ranch on the Beaver Valley.
They started their married life with Ellis’s two milk cows, a Holstein and Brown Swiss, and some hogs. Several dairy cows were eventually added with the milk being separated and the cream sold to the Farmers Co-op in Elgin. The cows were milked in stantions in the ‘Old Barn,’ first by hand and then with milkers. A few years later Ellis built a Grade A dairy barn with the milk being picked up in tankers. The Heifers born on the farm/ranch were saved with the steers being fattened. In later years the steers were taken in a stock trailer, holding 7-8 steers, to Hospers, Iowa for slaughter. After milking for 40 years, Ellis and Lois sold their milk cows to neighbors George and Marge Childers.
This decision was bittersweet for each cow had a name. After selling the dairy herd Ellis and Lois began taking in heifers or cows from the Thiele Dairy using intensive rotational grazing on irrigated grass. Later they obtained the property of Lois’s parents, Earl and Mary Rossow, turning the home into Sandhills Hide a Way Guest House.
In 2013 Ellis and Lois’s son Steven and his wife Janna moved into the area to be involved in Ellis and Lois’s operation. Ellis was always looking for new things to try or a better way to do things. Putting irrigation on their farm had neighbors scratching their heads and telling him it wouldn’t work. Over the years two types of silos were built on the farm, the Hanson and the Harvestors. Ellis’s intensive rotational grazing practices have made him known throughout the state as the “Grass King.”
Ellis was politically minded, enjoyed organizations and was often the lone community member at Wheeler Central School Board meetings to protest high taxes. He could be seen on the road every day on his 4-wheeler checking cattle and pivots. At the age of 92 he could still be seen on his 4-wheeler. Ellis held many offices in his life including: Wheeler County District 4 country school board, FCX(CVA) board member, past President of Wheeler County Farm Bureau, Wheeler County Foundation and past Chairman of the Wheeler County Republican party. Ellis was a member of Loup RC&D, Bartlett Lions Club, Wheeler County Zoning Board, Farm Bureau Advisory Board, Elgin Community Club and the ‘Just Crusin,’ Classic Car Club. Ellis was a former member of the RLDS Church (Community Church of Christ) in Clearwater. He also attended Trinity Lutheran Church in Elgin, becoming a member May 7, 2023.
Survivors include his loving wife Lois (Rossow) of nearly 71 years of marriage and 3 children; Sherry Tetschner of Bartlett, Janet (Russ) Hale of Arvada, CO and Steven (Janna) Schrunk of Elgin. Surviving siblings are Roland (Shirley) Schrunk, Merlynn Schrunk, Earleen Jensen, Laura Ratliff, Bob (Sheila) Schrunk and Tim (Ruth) Schrunk. Grandchildren include: Andy (Nikki) Tetschner of Lincoln, Ben Tetschner of Bartlett, Luke (Angela) Tetschner of Gilbert, Arizona, Angela (Mike) Keyes of Beatrice, Nicholas (Mercie-Lynn) Schrunk of Omaha and Meghan (David) Hester of Fairmont. Great grandchildren include: Hannah and Ty Tetschner of Lincoln, Mikella Smith of Phoenix, Arizona and Mason, Myles and Madelynn Tetschner of Gilbert, Arizona, Sawyer, Winnie and Juniper Keyes of Beatrice, Kamehameha Pfiefer and Keanu Schrunk of Omaha, and Jamison Hester of Fairmont.
He was preceded in death by his parents, sister Alva Robinson, sisters-in-law Nila Schrunk and Carol Rossow, brothers-in-law Dorald Robinson, Dale Ratliff, Bob Markle, Marlowe Jensen and John Rossow.
