Funeral services for Iona Bills Peterson Allison will be conducted on Friday, March 28, 2008 at 2 p.m. at the Martin Funeral Home Chapel with her nephew Dick Rennels officiating.

Interment will be in the Red Hill Cemetery, Hammon, Roger Mills County, Oklahoma under the direction of the Martin Funeral Home of Elk City.

Iona Peterson Allison, 92, died March 21, 2008 at the Elk City Nursing Home.

The daughter of Pitts and Myrtle Bills, her mother died shortly after Iona's birth on March 15, 1916, and she was adopted by Isaac Andrew and Minnie Peterson, homesteaders in the Colter community, northwest of Elk City.

Iona was the last survivor of her generation in that community.

She married Clinton Melvin Allison, a neighbor and schoolmate, when she was 19, and their son was born a year later.

Forced off the land by the Dustbowl and the Great Depression, one of her most vivid memories of the Depression was being paid $25.00 by the federal government to shoot each of their starving cows.

She was an "Okie" who with her young family drove along Route 66 to California in 1930, where their daughter was born. They returned to Oklahoma in 1941.

She and her family again moved to California after the end of World War II in 1946 and returned to Oklahoma for good in 1949.

For many of her later years, she managed the family farm almost single handedly, feeding cattle in far flung pastures in frigid or torrid weather from her old blue pickup, sleeping with a pistol under her pillow, and shooting varmints when they came to close to her house.

She was among a vanishing breed of gritty, tough pioneer women. She experienced early poverty, personal disappointments in life, and loss of sight and hearing in her last years, but she managed her struggles with dignity, gave love to those around her, and was fiercely devoted to her immediate and extended family.

She was a faithful, lifetime member of the Church of Christ.

Her husband Clinton "Clint," brother Glen Peterson and wife Mattie; brother, Doss Bills; sister, Flossie Myers and husband Charles "Fritz" and sister-in-law, Claudia Allison preceded her in death.

Left to mourn her are her son and daughter-in-law Clinton and Phyllis Allison of Knoxville, Tennessee; and daughter and son-in-law Barbara and Everet Jencks; five grandchildren; ten great grandchildren; and one great-great-grandchild; several beloved nieces, nephews and other loving family members, including special friend and caretaker Jeannie Jobe.

The family request memorials in her name be made to the American Diabetes Association.

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