Clara Marie Shelley

Services for Clara Marie Shelley, who died on Sunday August 12^th, 2018, at the Carriage House in Snowflake, Arizona, will be held on Saturday August 18^th at 10:00 am at the Joseph City Chapel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with a visitation 1 hour prior.  Burial will follow at the Joseph City Cemetery.

Clara was born July 8^th, 1936 to Leslie Joseph and Callie Bryant Brewer in Pinedale, Arizona, with her Grandmother Emma Bryant assisting in her birth.

During her childhood, Clara was active and athletic, and she enjoyed being able to out run the boys. She also developed a musical skill that was a blessing for her life and freely shared her gift with others especially in her many church callings. She was generous to a fault, yet consistently wished she could give more. Clara was known for having ambition and for wanting everything neat and clean. She was always very social having an outgoing personality, and she never seemed to have met a stranger.

Clara was only 13 years old when she started dating the love of her life, Clyde Wendell Shelley. They were married in 1953 in the Mesa Arizona Temple for time and all eternity.

Clara was a busy wife, mother and homemaker, yet this made her very happy. She always told everyone how she was thankful to be able “to have 4 kids in 5 years”. Her happiness increased as Wendell and Clara brought his deceased sister, Barbara’s, sons into their home to raise. Ronald and John Lubbers then made their family now eight in number, and Clara did all she could to care for each one.

After all the kids were in school, Clara started working outside the home. Her work as waitress led her to be manager of the busy Gabrielle’s Pancake House Restaurant, which sat on Route 66 in Holbrook. She found herself needing a lot of extra summer help, so she hired her children and her many nieces and nephews. Consequently, the local customers and coworkers heard her being called “Aunt Clara” so much, that is what they started calling her, too. She made many life-time friends, and they remember her quick wit, good humor, honesty, charity and unprejudiced nature.

In 1980, Wendell transferred with the US Postal Service to the post office in Humboldt, Arizona, where she lived until 2003 when she moved back to Joseph City. What really made it her comfortable “home” was being able to bring the porch swing Wendell had made for their Humboldt home with her. She spent many an hour in this porch swing alone and with her family and friends and usually always with her Dr. Pepper. But too soon for Clara, this time of freely coming and going as she pleased in her little Toyota with the “CLARYS” license plate came to an end. Dementia robbed her of the freedom she loved as she required daily help to live, so she went into the Carriage House for care.

Clara will forever be loved and appreciated for the many roles she willingly accepted and tried to do. Some of which were daughter, wife, mother, grandmother, great grandmother, sister, aunt, cousin, friend, and coworker. Clara Marie Brewer Shelley was all of this and more, and she will be remembered and honored for the family-loving and generous woman of God she ever was.

Clara was preceded in death by her loving husband, parents, brother Leslie Junior, sister Carole Miller and nephew John Lubbers. Her survivors include her sisters, Charlotte Petersen (Loral), Bobbie Jean Basham; her brother, Coleman Brewer (M.J.); her daughter, Lizabeth Johnson (Byron); son, Nathan (Diana); son, Monroe; daughter, Amber Fish (Bret), and nephew Ronald Lubbers (Annie). She has 10 grandchildren, 30 great grandchildren, and many beloved nieces, nephews and friends.