Gladys Vlasta (Funda) Hewitt, 94, passed away peacefully on June 11, 2017, at Peaceful Integration Care Home in Lake Oswego, Oregon, due to a stroke and complications of Alzheimer’s disease, which had been diagnosed in 2013. Born May 17, 1923, to Czech immigrants Frank Funda and Annie Martinek Funda in the small rural town of Emmett, Idaho, she was much beloved by her parents and her two older brothers James Frank and Lumir, and she often told stories about how her brothers protected her and “spoiled” her. Even though her family was poor, she thought of her childhood on her parents’ small farm as idyllic. In Idaho, she was known by her Czech name “Vlasta”—a name known in that culture’s history as a famous woman warrior. Like her namesake, Gladys was an unusually strong-willed woman whose accomplishments might never have been predicted by her humble beginnings.

After graduating from Emmett High School in 1942, she went to college at Boise Junior College (now Boise State University) and got a two-year degree in bookkeeping. Then, becoming the first person in her family to graduate from college, she completed her baccalaureate degree in Business at University of Idaho. She briefly worked as a secretary in Seattle, Washington, where she met her future husband Llewellyn Arthur Hewitt, who had recently graduated and was beginning a practice as a podiatrist. The two were married September 3, 1950 in Emmett and in 1953 settled in Portland, Oregon, where they built their home with their own hands and lived happily until Llewellyn’s death from cancer on Valentine’s Day, 2010. Always a hard worker, Gladys was a secretary during her early marriage at the then radio station KGW, where she spent her lunch hours correcting and rewriting her boss’s advertising copy. In the 1970’s, she became a secretary at Portland Community College, first for the English Department and then in the Veterans Office. She loved her work there and earned an award for her devotion to the school’s Vietnam veterans. In the late 1970’s, her husband asked her to become his nurse when he added in-patient surgery to his practice, so in her fifties, she left PCC and went back to school to become a nurse; she studied hard and proudly passed a national podiatry nursing exam with honors. She worked side by side with her husband until he retired in 2000.

Even as her Alzheimer’s disease advanced, she was known for her sense of humor. Although she could no longer tell the jokes that she loved, she maintained a wry wit that often belied the disease. She had a lifelong, special gift for loving animals, especially cats, and she was known to tame all sorts of wild birds. Quite literally, she wouldn’t hurt a fly—something her farm family never failed to tease her about.

She is preceded in death by her husband Llewellyn Arthur Hewitt, her parents, her brothers and their wives, Viola and Antonia.

She is survived by her niece Evelyn Funda (daughter of Lumir, who lives in Logan, Utah), Evelyn’s son and Gladys’s great-nephew, Jacob Peplinski (age 20, presently living in Tokyo, Japan), and several distant cousins who live in Minnesota.

As per her wishes, there will be no funeral services. She will be privately interred in Emmett, Idaho, beside her husband and near the rest of her family. In lieu of flowers, her niece suggests donations to the Czech Society of Oregon (Portland Chapter, care of the organization’s Secretary Paul Micka) or any local humane society or Veterans charity. The family wishes to thank the caregivers who made her final years as happy as possible, especially care manager Joyce Sjoberg of Aging Advisors and Blanka Nyvlt, director of Peaceful Integration.