Alma Ruth Stiles

ALMA RUTH STILES Graveside services for longtime Cortez resident, Alma Ruth Stiles will be held at 2 p.m. Friday, September 25 at Cortez Cemetery. Bishop Russell Decker will officiate. Alma was born November 23, 1917 to Earle Kenneth Childers and Amelia Elizabeth (Miller) Childers of Pomona, Calif. She died on September 21, 2009 at the age of 91. Alma was born and raised in Pomona, Calif. until she was 17 years old. She came to Colorado with her step-sister and her husband, Lorena and Sam Antes. Soon after arriving she met and married Charlie Stiles on July 3, 1935. They first lived on their homestead on Montezuma Creek, near Hatch, Utah. Her oldest son was born while they lived there. About 1940 they bought a farm in lower McElmo Canyon and her second son and daughter were born there. In the 1950s they moved their family to a ranch east of Mancos, Colo. in Thompson Park and lived there for many years, later they moved back to the Cortez area where she worked as a cook at the hospital. Charlie died in 1995 and she has continued to live near Cortez and was living at the Vista Grande Nursing Home at the time of her death. Alma was preceded in death by her husband, Charlie; parents, Earle and Amelia Childers; and a grandson, Kevin Stiles. She is survived by her three children: sons, Donald Leroy Stiles living in Peru, and Kenneth Edward Stiles of Cortez; and daughter, Charlene Elizabeth Stiles of Cortez; 9 grandchildren, 13 great grandchildren, and 8 great great grandchildren; and many nieces and nephews. Memorial contributions can be made in memory of Alma Stiles with Hospice of Montezuma, PO Box 740, Cortez.