IdaLee Gandy

Wilma IdaLee Gandy, 89, of Trimble, MO passed away peacefully surrounded by her family on August 7, 2024.

Wilma Idalee Fry Gandy was born on October 14th, 1935, on the family farm in Chariton County, Missouri to Herbert Ralph Fry and Wilma Fay Clark Fry. She was the second of three children of that union, along with her older brother, Herbert Ralph Fry and her younger sister Ruth Noreen Fry. Her childhood was filled with family and joy, and she worked every day to pass similar life experiences to her children and later her grandchildren and great grandchildren.

She walked to a one room schoolhouse that was across the road, less than a hundred yards to the west. Her grandparents were a quarter mile to the northwest on the original family farm and when asked, she would share such warm and lasting memories of her family. So much wisdom came from her Grandpa Fry and her Dad, and over the years the origin of those principles became very easy to trace.

After Graduating from Keytesville High School in 1953, she came to Kansas City to work at the First National Bank of Kansas City downtown on 10th street. After a weekend on the farm, every Monday morning her Dad would drop her off at work, with her jumping out of a big stock truck loaded with cows, before he headed to the stockyards. When teased by her coworkers she responded, “WHERE DO YOU THINK YOUR STEAKS COME FROM?” She held her head high because first and foremost she was a Fry girl and all that it implied.

As fate would have it, a chance meeting at a youth group on a Thursday night at Bethpel Baptist Church, she would meet and fall in love with her soul mate Calvin Kirk Gandy, Jr. They would go on to marry on August 16, 1953, at that same church. From that Sunday they began a journey that would take them to distant points around the globe.

From that union she formed a “HOME” and had two children, Dale Dewayne Gandy and Deborah Ann Gandy Findley. She set about early to instill and install a lasting moral compass and the wisdom to navigate life’s challenges in each of her children. Whenever the doors were open at the First Baptist Church of Trimble, Missouri she would have her family there at the second pew from the back on the north side. That church became her second family and they assisted in the installation of those two compasses.

Her career came to include the Postmaster position at Trimble, Missouri and second, only to her family, as one of her proudest accomplishments. Upon her retirement on October 31, 1995, she and Calvin began to travel across the United States in earnest all in comfort of their new home — the RV. It would take them to distant shores and family events all chronicled by a diary and hundreds of photos.

She is survived by her children, Dale Dewayne Gandy and wife Janet, and Deborah Ann Gandy Findley and husband James, her grandchildren Courtney Loveland-Hennis, James David Findley II and wife Kara, Jessica Danielle Findley Rusk and husband Kaleb, Christopher James Findley and wife Hannah, Kirk Calvin Gandy and wife Katie, and her great grandchildren Cathryn Hennis, Natylie Hennis, Emma Findley and Lyla Findley. She is preceded in death by her parents Ralph and Wilma Fry and her siblings Ruth and Herbert, grandson Robbie Rader, and grandson Jeremy Hennis.

On the morning of August 7th, 2024, she travelled one more time to meet her parents and siblings and her heavenly father who must have greeted her with “WELL DONE, GOOD AND FAITHFULL SERVANT, THOU HAS BEEN FAITHFUL OVER A FEW THINGS, I WILL MAKE THEE RULER OVER MANY THINGS, ENTER THOU INTO THE JOY OF THY LORD” Mathew 25:23.

Visitation: 1:00 pm with Funeral Services at 2:00 pm Monday, August 12th at Hixson-Klein Funeral Home, Gower, MO
Burial: Allen Cemetery, Gower, MO.