Bogumila "Mary" Scheinkonig

 A visitation will be held at Ohde Twit Funeral Home on Thursday, June 21, 2018 from 5-7 PM.  Mary will be reunited with her husband Michael after a funeral service in Leeds, England at the end of August.

Bogumila (Mary) Scheinkonig, 100, passed away peacefully Wednesday, June 13, 2018 at her residence in Thomas Rest Haven Nursing Home in Coon Rapids, Iowa.

Mary was born on Christmas Day, December 25, 1917, on the eastern border of Poland to Henryk and Victoria (Szylkiewicz) Bromboszcz.  She often spoke of her family of a happy childhood with her younger brother Ryrzard growing up in the countryside surrounded by the rich forests of Eastern Poland.

After the Russian/German invasion of Poland in 1939, at the age of 22, Mary and her family found themselves under the control of the Soviet Union and being transported to labor camps in Siberia. Before the outbreak of the war, she was courted by Michael Scheinkonig, whose family was also forcibly placed in the gulags of Siberia.  Michael and Mary were reunited in the camps and married in 1940. Their first child, Anna (Tigges), was born the following year.

After Russia switched to join the allies against Nazi Germany, all able-bodied Polish men, including Michael, were released from the camps, trained, and sent to fight under the British flag in Italy. Mary, her daughter Anna, and the two grandmothers were evacuated to Uganda, Africa where they would spend the next five years waiting out the war in Europe.   While in Uganda, Mary assumed the role of a mathematics teacher to the teenage children of the camps.

 After the war Mary and her young daughter reunited with Michael and chose to live in England and not return to their native war-torn Poland which had been taken over by the Communists.  As refugees in England, Mary worked as a seamstress in a clothing factory and welcomed their second child, a boy, Kris in 1949.

Mary lived in Leeds, England until 1982, when Michael passed away after a long struggle with cancer.  It was at that time she decided to move to Willy, Iowa, USA, to live with her daughter Anna, who had married an American soldier, (Vern Tigges) in 1966 and their two children, Vern II and Vickie (McCarthy).

 During her life in Iowa, Mary was active in the Catholic Church, learned to drive a car for the first time and learned to quilt through her participation in the Carroll County Retired Volunteer Program (RSVP).  She also earned her American citizenship and voted for the first time in the 1988 presidential election.  She loved gardening, caring for her dogs, as well as cooking and spending time with her family.  She was known for her welcoming smile and giving LOTS of kisses to her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

 Mary is survived by her two children:  Anna Tigges (Vern) of Adel, Iowa, Kris Scheinkonig (Gill) of Matlock, England;  five grandchildren; six great-grandchildren; and a niece Hanka Fromella of Poland.