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Sheila Alice (Jenson) Klein was born July 16, 1927, on the family farm in Providence Township in Buena Vista County, two and a half miles northwest of Newell. She was the daughter of Walter DeWitt Jenson and Edelia (Bodholdt) Jenson. She passed away with family present on April 19, 2025, in her home of 69 years on East Lake Okoboji outside Spirit Lake.
A visitation will be held from 4-6 p.m. on Friday, May 2, at Robinson Funeral Home in Spirit Lake. A private family burial will be held in Lake View Cemetery in Spirit Lake. Online condolences may be left at www.spiritlakefuneralhome.com.
Sheila attended Providence Consolidated School in Sulphur Springs, from which she graduated valedictorian in 1945. She especially enjoyed playing basketball for Providence High School. Her senior year the Providence team won the Buena Vista County tournament and a game in the sectionals. She was on the first team for several years in junior and senior high school and played as one of three forwards. In the school band she played the timpani and with her two sisters sang as a trio. She also played the piano and surprised herself with first place in the Newell Talent Show.
After high school Sheila completed the two-year teacher training course at Buena Vista College in Storm Lake, earning her associate’s degree in 1946. She fondly remembers art classes, playing in an exhibition basketball game for the college and performing in a play with the BV Players.
Her first teaching employment was as a fifth-grade teacher in Spirit Lake from 1946 to1948. It was there at a high school football game that she met her future husband, Dr. Alfred Libby Klein, who had just opened his optometric practice in 1947. They were married on June 5, 1948, at First Congregational Church in Newell and celebrated their seventy-first wedding anniversary in 2019.
Sheila and Alfred had six children: Sheryl (Henry) Hall of Spirit Lake; Alfred Libby Klein, Jr. (Sue Iwen Booth) of Sherburn, Minn.; Deborah (Dr. Kenneth) Thompson of Gardner, Kan.; Barbara (Dennis) Mochal of Stilwell, Kan.; Cara (Mike) Scalcucci of Bradenton, Fla.; and Dr. Trisha Werner (Paul Ysebaert) of Sarasota, Fla. Sheila believed her greatest achievement was raising their childen. Her children remember fondly her creativity making costumes, her music on the piano and spinet organ, her interest in history and nature, and boat rides to Gull Point.
For more than 10 years, Sheila worked as the bookkeeper for Optometric Associates in Spirit Lake. In addition, she spent much of her time volunteering as a Sunday School teacher and a member of the altar guild at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, for Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, for the hospital auxiliary, as a Ground Observer Corps member, for various school support groups and bond issues, and for teenage pageants. Sheila was also a member of L.B.U., served as president of Chapter BE of P.E.O., and was a member of Eastern Star and the Iowa Optometric Auxiliary. In 1969 she was honored as the University of Iowa Mother of the Year.
Sheila is survived by her six children and their families, including nine grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren; and a sister, Sonya Rae Blinkinsop of Winston-Salem, N.C.
She was preceded in death by her parents; her husband Alfred; her sister Yvonne Nadine Peek; and her grandson Seth Tyler Thompson.
The family of Sheila Klein can be reached at PO Box 145, Spirit Lake, IA 51360.
