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Stella May Dunlap
Stella May Dunlap
Stella May Gholson-Dunlap, grand-lady of our heart and friend, passed quietly on the morning of July 23, 2007, at the age of 92. A longtime snowbird and then "permanent" resident at Temple View Resort in St. George, Stella loved her desert life there and had many friends and associates both inside and outside the community.
Born Nov. 21, 1915, in Tucumcari, N.M., of "Texas ranger stock," Stella’s life was the textbook story of the Old West filled with the memories of one-room schoolhouses, kerosene lanterns, seeing Billy the Kid when she was a small child, working the fields of broomcorn, as well as endless gatherings of her family of cowboys, who gathered ’round the barrel with their fiddles and guitars playing sweet country songs long into the moonlit nights.
She married her high school sweetheart and spent 56 years with him raising two children, enduring the hardships of war and depression and spent over 25 years as an aircraft mechanic and supervisor at Hill Air Force Base in Northern Utah. She and "Mr. D" spent many years square dancing with the Whitney-Whirlers Dance Club of Ogden.
Stella loved to travel and took great delight in having traveled around the world as well as having gone on an excursion to The Holy Land with her daughter and "lacked only two" in having been able to visit every state in the union.
She leaves behind her daughter, Jan, and grandchildren, Rebecca, Steve and Kyle, a great-granddaughter, Stella Loreen, many, many "kin," friends and "pardners" as well as an enormous reservoir of advice, smiles, loving gestures, gifts and quilts and scenic paintings, all of which enriched the lives of everyone who knew her.
We will all miss her terribly. Yet, in knowing this, she would smile and nod and remind us all that when she "flew away," she was going to go up to sit on one of those beautiful, glittering midnight stars. And late at night, if we looked for her, we’d find that place that she’d made "home"… and as we gaze, that star will sparkle …. "Stella" will be waving.
There was a small, private service Saturday, July 28, at the Tonaquint Cemetery in St. George. It is asked that in lieu of flowers, anyone wishing to, might send a gift in her name to the Senior Citizens Center in St. George.

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