In Loving Memory of 
Emilie Reimer
(Lepp)
age 97
Lovingly remembered by her children 
Garry (Marge) & Elaine (Donald), 
as well as their families.
Emilie was predeceased by her husband Dave.

Died
November 7, 2024
Tabor Personal Care Home
Morden, Manitoba 

Funeral Service
Monday, December 2, 2024
Prairie Mennonite Fellowship
Located 8.4km South of 
Crystal City, MB via Hwy 34
2:00 p.m.

To view the livestream service, please click the link below: 

https://event.forgetmenotceremonies.com/ceremony?c=419a802e-b48f-44db-80f8-c156394c66ea

Interment ~ Crystal City Cemetery

Donations in memory of Emilie may be made to
Prairie View Lodge Foundation;
424 Broadway Ave - Apt 26
Pilot Mound, Manitoba R0G 1P0
Canadian Foodgrains Bank;
PO Box 767, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3C 2L4

 

Emilie (Lepp) Reimer (b. October 21, 1927) was the last child born to John and Emilie Lepp. She died peacefully at the Tabor Personal Care Home (Morden) just prior to first light on Thursday, November 7, her daughter Elaine and daughter-in-law Marge by her side. She was ninety-seven. 

Emilie was born in Osterwick, a Mennonite village then, now farmland in the Stanley municipality, Manitoba. When she was a young girl, her family moved to Manitou and a few years later to a farmstead near Purves, then a tiny farming town southeast of Crystal City, a few kilometers north of the U.S. border. 

She attended the Willowdale school, occasionally getting to and from Purves on horseback. Her social network radiated from Purves, the little centre of their municipality. There she met David Reimer, whose family also farmed in the municipality. The two wed in the Purves United Church in 1948.  Emilie and Dave established a home together and remained integrally involved in their church and community for the duration of their lengthy marriage of seventy-three years. 

After Emilie and Dave moved to the Pilot Mound area, Emilie’s volunteer commitments began to flourish.  She was active on the board of the local nursing home, served as treasurer of the Women’s Auxiliary for the Rock Lake Health District, and rotated responsibilities with the women at the Crystal City Mennonite Church.  She was an active member of the Crystal City Mennonite Church for almost all of her seventy-six-year membership. In the community, Emilie delivered meals on wheels to local shut-in residents until she was well into her senior years. She contributed to Dave’s efforts in making Pilot Mound an active, thriving community.  

In addition to being a homemaker and caring for her two children, Emilie developed several hobbies.  She took on ceramics and when their home was full enough, distributed final products to family and friends. She became accomplished in handwork and spread her needlework far and wide.  She stitched many quilts for Mennonite Central Committee’s relief efforts. 

First and foremost in Emilie’s mind was her family, both her extended family and immediate family.   When she married into the Reimer family, she became part of a tight family structure where presence and togetherness was celebrated frequently.  She loved her Reimer ‘siblings’ and developed special relationships with her Reimer ‘sisters’, most of whom, like her, had married into the family.

She loved each of her grandchildren and taken as a group, loved the whole lot. Even in later age, when the great grandchildren came, pictures of her taken with them show clearly how her love could communicate without words. 

Emilie was generally healthy throughout her entire life. She survived chemotherapy in her early nineties and skin cancer while she was in personal care. The few nights she spent in hospital earlier in her life were for gall bladder and tonsilitis. She died, not because of illness but because her body, entering its ninety-eighth year, had run its course. 

Emilie became frail only in late life. After she moved to the Tabor Personal Care Home, her world was limited to her room of four walls.  She appreciated those who came to visit, especially the visits from family; Lepp family nieces, Reimer family in-laws, nieces and nephews, and members of her own immediate family, her children, their spouses, her grandchildren and great grandchildren. 

On behalf of Emilie, her family expresses gratitude for the Prairieview Mennonite Fellowship community who continued to regard Emilie and Dave as their own even after their move to assisted living in Morden and Emilie’s move to personal care. 

We are thankful for caring professionals both in Pilot Mound and Morden who helped both Dave and Emilie navigate the system in the Southern Health district. We are grateful for the kind people at Homestead South and Tabor Personal Care home who combined empathy with professionalism. And we thank doctors Chatwin and Woelk, and the other health care professionals who cared for Emilie in her senior years and as a cancer patient and resident of Tabor.  

Emilie Reimer is predeceased by her mother and father, Emilie and John Lepp, and by all of her Lepp siblings and in-law siblings. She is predeceased by Dave Reimer, her husband of seventy-three years, and twelve siblings in the Reimer family. 

She is grieved by seven sisters-in-law, Anne, Ella, Hilda, Nettie, Betty, Tina and Jenny; and three brothers-in-law, Abe, Henry and George. 

She leaves her immediate family to grieve and to cherish their memories of her:  

Her son Garry and his wife Marge, their children, Lisa, Ramona (Scott), Jan (Pat), Stacie (Joe), and their grandchildren, Noah, Hunter, Conner, Stella, Kristopher, Declan, Ethan, Isla and Jillian. 

Her daughter Elaine and her husband Donald, their children Jotham (Stacy), Tanya (Luke), and Leah (Andrew); and their grandchildren, Eira, Nigel, Inez, and Solomon.   

She bids us farewell with this Irish blessing:

May the road rise up to meet you.

May the wind be always at your back,

May the sun shine warm upon your face

And the rains fall soft upon the fields,

And until we meet again,

May God hold you in the hollow of his Hand.