Ora Lowe Geddes Marstella

Ora Lowe Geddes Marstella

Ora Lowe Geddes Marstella of Layton Utah, age 77, died April 6, 2010 at home after many years of poor health and physical disabilities.

She was born March 22, 1933 in Banida, Idaho to Hugh Lester Geddes and Lydia Doney Lowe. She was the youngest of fourteen children and as a child living during the early 1930s in a small town in rural southern Idaho, she told stories of Indians and farm life very much like the early pioneer life of Utah and Idaho. At the age of 22, Ora joined the Air Force where she served as an Air Force officer and nurse from 1956 through 1958 and visited such places as New York and Morocco. While in the Air Force she had a very special patient who later became her husband. She married John Leslie Marstella on April 4, 1959 in Bountiful Utah. She received her Bachelor''s Degree in Nursing from the University of Utah in 1965.

Ora, was the mother of one daughter and three sons who all loved her very much. The family moved numerous times over 20 years of marriage as John worked as a soil conservationist working with farmers and ranchers in rural Utah communities. Wherever they moved, Ora worked in the local hospitals, often on the graveyard shift, so that she could be home with her children during the day.

Ora loved nursing. She worked as a nurse for over 40 years in many of the small hospitals throughout northern Utah. Her favorite area of medicine was obstetrics. She loved to assist with delivering babies and helped deliver hundreds of babies during her nursing career.

A knee and hip replacement operation in 1989 left her disabled and eventually put her in a wheelchair for the last years of her life.

Even with her disabilities, she loved to travel and took several trips with her daughter to Texas and Louisiana, Montana, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, and to visit her sons in Minnesota and Colorado. She also traveled to New York and Costa Rica and the Panama Canal with her friends and took a trip to Arkansas with her youngest son Beau.

Her daughter, Mary Lou Marstella, has been living with and taking care of Ora for the past 17 years, making her final years more comfortable and allowing her to stay at home where she could live in dignity and spend time with her family.

She leaves to cherish her memory; daughter Mary Lou; sons, Leslie (Keri), Hugh (Mary), Beau (Christy); 11 grandchildren, Amber, Aaron, Tabytha, Michael, Ashley, Andrew, Makinzi, Amanda, Ammon, Kaitlin, Kirsten; 2 great grandchildren, Xander and Kimrie; older sister Grace Jorgensen; older brother Irel Geddes, and many nieces, nephews, and friends.

Funeral services will be held Saturday, April 10, 2010 at 11 a.m. at Lindquist''s Layton Mortuary, 1867 No. Fairfield Road. Friends and family may call Saturday from 9:45 to 10:45 a.m. at the mortuary. Interment, Preston, Idaho Cemetery at 3:30 p.m.