Rebekah Birdsall

Rebekah (Becky) Birdsall passed away March 30, 2011 at the Golden Living Retirement Community in Salt Lake City, Utah from complications of congestive heart failure. Becky had been a resident of this caring community since 2007. Her family is most grateful to the staff there for providing her with such excellent care and for providing her with a loving home near the end of her days. A special thank you goes to Dr. Mark Cacciamani and Brent Pace for their professional, patient and compassionate care. Her family extends their gratitude to the professionals at FlexCare and Sunbrook Home Health & Hospice.

Born February 15, 1924, in Wills Point, Texas, Becky was the ninth of ten children born to James Teel and Oddie Majorsa€"a family that farmed during the difficult years of the 1920s and 1930s. During her formative years on the farm, she was blessed to have a mother and older sister who began teaching her reading and history lessons which she dearly loved. This instilled in her a lifelong passion for reading, studying and history. She generously and easily passed these passions along to her own children. Becky also inspired in her children, and those around her, the importance of nurturing your listening and empathy skills, traits she possessed beyond measure.

Having graduated early from high school, she moved to San Antonio, Texas. Too young to enroll in college, she instead decided to learn nursing skills since there was a need for caregivers during the war effort. She began her nursing career working in a military hospital, caring for returning soldiers. While working at the military hospital she met her future husband Tom Birdsall, who was recuperating from a back injury suffered during an Army training mission. After their courtship, they were married on Christmas Day, 1944. Tom was in the oil business, and his career took them to several states: Oklahoma, Texas, Wyoming, Colorado and finally Nebraska, where they raised their three children. Becky''s lifetime love of nursing eventually evolved into geriatric care and she worked in a nursing home for many years in Kimball, Nebraska. Tom and Becky moved to Utah in December 2001 to be closer to their son, Gary, and his family. Tom passed away in 2002.

Becky is survived by her three beloved children: Gary (Bountiful, UT); Rick (Greeley, CO), and Kathy (Foster City, CA). She has three grandchildren, Callie and Saraha€"(daughters of Gary and Paulette) and Terrance (son of Rick and Glenda). She had a great-grandson, Cade Benjamin, who was born in 2008 to her granddaughter, Sarah.

There will be no public memorial service. In her name, the family requests that any memorial gifts be made either to the Golden Living Retirement Community in Taylorsville, UT or to the American Nurses Foundation Disaster Fund for Japan, PO Box 50432, St. Louis, MO 63150-4342, www.anfonline.org. Arrangements entrusted to Lindquist''s Bountiful Mortuary.