Loretta Carole Schmidt

Our dear mother, Loretta Carole (Ward) Schmidt, passed away peacefully on April 20, 2022, in Castle Pines, CO at the age of 71. She is survived by her four children and ten grandchildren who were the entirety of her world: Elizabeth (Patrick) Spieler, Laura, and Jonathan; Leonard (Kathryn) Schmidt, Adrianna (Garrett and baby on the way, Cain) Hlavacek, Bianca, and Carlisle; Adam (Erin) Schmidt, Adam Jr., Isaiah, and Ethan; Corey (Sara) Schmidt, Connor and Jace. She is also survived by her four siblings: Aurelia Elliott, Martina Holt, William Ward, and Albert (Beverly) Ward. Loretta was born in Meridian, MS September 16, 1950 to Martin Augustus and Lillian Bell (Price) Ward. She graduated Meridian High School in 1968, then studied at Meridian Community College and Delta State University. Her undergraduate degree in Secondary English Education was earned from Hastings College, NE class of 1986. Loretta married Dale Schmidt and moved to Ayr, NE in 1973 where she lived on a farm raising her four children. She moved to Blue Hill, NE in 1989. Loretta was a high school English teacher for 27 years. She taught at St. Cecilia High School in Hastings, NE for 10 years and at Blue Hill High School in Blue Hill, NE for 17 years. In between teaching she also worked for two years at the local newspaper, the Blue Hill Leader. Loretta happily retired in 2015 and moved to Omaha, NE to be near many of her children and grandchildren. During her retirement she was delighted to attend many of her grandchildren’s extracurricular activities in the Omaha and Castle Pines areas. Our mother, Loretta, was a woman of great faith and a person who valued integrity, diversity, inclusion, community, and family most of all. She was a very empathetic, compassionate, and tolerant person and never met a stranger. Mom loved everyone for who they were and made every attempt to lead her life through the power of positivity. She had many interests and passions over the duration of her life. Mom loved to read and you would often find her consumed in the next book she picked up or one she had read many times. Mom loved musicals and the theater. She was heavily involved in the Hastings Community Theater and her schools’ theater programs over the years; acting, directing, and doing stage makeup for the many performers. In her early years, mom was involved in Girl Scouts and throughout her life continued to tell stories about going to camps and events when she was a little girl. Oh, the stories……as many know, our mother loved to tell stories. She had a true gift with her storytelling and while many would often roll their eyes with the stories, it is one of the many things we will most certainly miss about her. To many, our mother was known as Loretta, Retta, or Aunt Retta. She was proud of her southern heritage and would reminisce about times growing up in the South and her southern roots. Remember the stories? She had many memories and somehow remembered the finest of details. She loved traveling to see her family ‘down south.’ Recently in February of this year, she spent a month visiting her siblings and enjoying time with them and their children. We are so thankful she was able to spend this time with them. Those memories and the stories she told when she got back home will be cherished by us forever. Mom was also proud of being a long time Nebraskan. She spent nearly 49 years in the Heartland from living on a farm, living in our beautiful hometown of Blue Hill, and recently moving to Omaha after retiring to be near many of her children and grandchildren. One of the greatest parts of her legacy is the unconditional love she showed to us all. To anyone reading this, we thank you for being her friend over the years and for the love you showed her. To her children, Loretta was simply mom, but to her grandchildren she was known as Grammy, or Gwammy as her license plate read. Her “Gwammy mobile” was home to many of her grandchildren’s candy wrappers, much foot traffic, and an indefinite number of happy moments going back and forth between school events and family gatherings in Omaha and Castle Pines. After reading this you may find we repeated some things over and over and over…...If you knew our mom, repeating things is so fitting. And, lastly, if any of this is not grammatically correct, you can be sure our mother, forever an English teacher, would have pointed it out to us. Love, Betsy, Lenny, Adam, Corey, and Families A Celebration of Life Service will be held on Saturday, May 7, 2022 at 11am CST at Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church in La Vista, NE with luncheon to follow. Please direct memorials to the family, which will be distributed in honor of our mother to the many organizations and causes she supported over the years.