Longtime Alaskan and Sterling resident Mary Margaret Shearer, 81, gained her angel wings on Saturday, June 10, 2023 at Central Peninsula Hospital in Soldotna.

A celebration of her life will be 3 p.m. Saturday, July 8, at Kharacters, 3851 Shelford St., Homer. Her cremated remains will be scattered off the Homer Spit, to rest with many other family members.

Mary was born Nov. 3, 1941 in Fremont, Ohio. She graduated from Bucyrus High School in 1959. She moved to Homer in 1974 and then to Sterling in 2002. Over the years she worked at Spartin Electric, was a hostess, and also a cannery worker, but most of all she was a homemaker.

Mary enjoyed cooking, fishing, canning, berry picking, bingo and shopping. She also loved arts and crafts, dressing up for Halloween and beach combing.

Her family wrote, “No one was a stranger to her. She made friends wherever she went and she had a special gift to help others. Her impact on those around her and her love for her family was truly a blessing. She was a wonderful mother, grandmother and wife. She was so many things to her family. She enjoyed traveling with us and had been in every state with the exception of Florida and Hawaii.”

Mary was preceded in death by her husband of 62 years, David L. Shearer, her father, Robert Brown Black and his wife, Ginger, her mother, Laura Isabelle Groves and her husband, Irvin, her son, Calvin David Shearer, sisters, Martha Jane Johnson and Marjorie Ann Robinson, and daughters-in-law, Debbie L. Shearer and Trish Shearer Barber.

Those left to cherish her memory include her brother, John A. Groves of Crestline, Ohio; son, Wayne A. Shearer of Sterling; daughters and sons-in-law, Edith and Ron Frazier of Soldotna and Laura and John Bogie of Homer; eight grandchildren; seven great-grandchildren; and nieces, Chanda Groves of Upper Sandusky, Ohio and Heather Houze of Dallas, Ga.

Arrangements by Peninsula Memorial Chapel