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Michael 'Mike' Shoars
Michael "Mike" Shoars, 59, of Orchard died Sunday, Oct. 17, 2010, at McAlester Regional Health Center in McAlester, Okla.
Funeral services will be held at 10:30 a.m. Friday, Oct. 22, at Our Savior's Lutheran Church in Osage with the Rev. Roy Ott and John Murray of Denison, Texas, officiating. Burial will be at the Orchard Cemetery in Orchard, Iowa.
Visitation is from 5:30 - 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 21, at the Champion-Bucheit Funeral Home in Osage and will continue one hour prior to services at the church.
Mike was born Feb. 17, 1959, in Charles City, Iowa, the son of Arthur Shoars and Donna (Roberts) Folmer. Mike grew up where he presently lived and truly enjoyed life on the acreage. He attended schools in Orchard until its closing and graduated from Osage Community High School in 1969. Mike attended two years of college at NIACC.
He met Deanna Thome and they began their life together on Sept. 1, 1973. Mike worked at White Farm until 1980, when he started doing floor coverings, first as a trade layer and then working for Champion Furniture for 14 years before opening Spring Creek Floor Coverings in 1999.
Mike enjoyed his grandchildren and especially enjoyed four-wheeling with them. He also enjoyed fishing, woodworking, driving their 1969 Mach 1 Mustang, spending time in Texas with friends, and his four-legged companion, Nina.
Left to cherish his memory is his wife, Deanna Shoars of Orchard; his mother, Donna Folmer of Osage; two sons, Chad (Laura) Shoars of Osage and Chris (Lisa) Shoars of Orchard; four grandchildren, Nicolas, Natalie, Kylah and Josie; one sister, Connie (Mike) Whitten of Charlotte, N.C.; one sister-in-law, Joeleen Samec of New Hampton; and his best friends, John and Christina Murray of Denison, Texas, and Randy and Mary Ervin of Newton.
He was preceded in death by his father, Arthur Shoars; his step-father, Fabian Folmer; and his father-in-law and mother-in-law, Roman and Wave Thome.
Information available and condolences accepted at 222.champion-bucheitfuneralhome.com
Champion-Bucheit Funeral Home, Osage (641) 732-3706.
(Deanna's address is: 3190 March Ave. - Orchard, IA 50460)
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John Walker
I carry with me wonderful memories of long summer days spent with Mike fishing along the banks of Spring Creek. Each time I return to Osage, I always set aside an afternoon to retrace those boyhood footsteps and revisit in my heart the perfection of that scene. I am thankful for Mike's comfortable, easy friendship of those years and the sense of self and sense of home which it inspires in me even today.
It was Mike who explained to me that all waters eventually flow into a larger ocean. Spring Creek flows to the Cedar, the Cedar to the Iowa, the Iowa to the Mississippi, the Mississippi to the Gulf, the Gulf joins the Atlantic, which is by nature a part of the single body of water that laps on the shores of every continent and island of the earth. Pretty insightful for a 3rd grader!
And so in tribute of that metaphor, Mike, I thank you for the wisdom learned while pondering trout. The nature of life is that each of us belong to a stream which inevitably winds its way toward a greater ocean of the spirit, It has always been our basic nature to BE that, GO there, and, like all who have gone downstream before us, BECOME ONE with it.
Your friend always,
John