Elmira Blaine "Bunny" Barker, 99, of Iowa Falls, Iowa, passed away Tuesday, March 10, 2015 at the Hospice of North Iowa, Mason City, Iowa. Funeral services for Bunny Barker will be 10:30 Friday, March 13, 2015 at the First Congregational Church United Church of Christ; 520 College Ave, Iowa Falls. A time of visitation will be from 5:00 to 7:00 pm Thursday, March 12, 2015 at the Linn's Funeral Home; 1521 Washington Ave., Iowa Falls. Burial will be at the Union Cemetery, Iowa Falls. Memorials are requested to be sent to the Iowa Falls State Bank, c/o Elmira Barker Memorial Fund, 601 Washington Ave., Iowa Falls, Iowa 50126. They will be divided among the Barlow Library, First Congregational Church UCC, and the P.E.O. Projects.

A daughter of Thomas H. and Leah F. (Johnson) Russell, Elmira was born on June 6, 1915, in Webster City, Iowa. When she was a few weeks old, her parents took her to Kincaid, Saskatchewan, Canada, where her father had homesteaded on a prairie wheat farm while engaging in the real estate and insurance business. When she was eight, the family returned to Webster City, which remained her home until she married Don W. Barker on December 23, 1938. He later became an Iowa Falls attorney. While they were still dating, he began calling her "Bunny." After they moved to Iowa Falls, everyone they knew was calling her "Bunny".
Bunny graduated from Webster City High School in 1933 and from Grinnell College in 1937 with a B.A. degree in dramatic art and with minors in English and mathematics. Subsequently, she taught English and coached all the plays at the Marion, Iowa, high school for four and a half years. During World War II, she and Don worked for the U.S. Government in Detroit, Michigan. Bunny was employed as a civilian instructor in the Army Signal Corps. In the fall of 1945, they selected Iowa Falls for their permanent home. They had a house built for them at 400 Jason Avenue and resided there for sixty years.
Bunny taught high school English for one semester in Eldora and two years in Iowa Falls. For some twenty- seven years, she assisted in preparing income tax returns in her husband's law office.
Active in many local community organizations, she joined the First Congregational Church (UCC), the Ellsworth Municipal Hospital Auxiliary, the Calkins Nature Center, the Highland Country Club, the Edgewood Board, the Women's Club Board, The American Field Service Committee, and the Iowa Falls Historical Society as well as on various sister city programs. She also entertained visitors from around the world. In addition, she served for a total of twenty-five years on the Iowa Falls Library Board and for a number of years on the State Library Board and the Regional Library Board, serving as president of the latter for two and a half years. For over sixty years, she belonged to the Isabella Literary Society, for which she gave many presentations, and P.E.O., a sisterhood devoted to higher education for women, the two organizations she loved the most.
Bunny enjoyed a variety of activities. Her hobbies included porcelain painting, reading, and playing golf. An exceptional seamstress, she sewed many of her own and her daughter's garments, including her daughter's wedding dress. Moreover, she enthusiastically joined her husband on their travels to over thirty countries.
Her daughter, Jane, was born in 1949 and is now a retired teacher in Forest City, Iowa. Her son, Bruce, was born in 1951 and now works as a software engineer and lives in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.
Bunny loved her children, her grandchildren, and her sister's family. She took pride in decorating and managing her home, and she enjoyed entertaining friends, relatives, and foreign guests alike. She had a warm heart and an outgoing personality with a ready smile.
She is survived by her daughter, Jane Nagy, of Forest City, Iowa; her son, Bruce Barker, of Cherry Hill, New Jersey; and her grandchildren, Anthony Barker and Jason, Blaise, and Marissa Nagy. She was preceded in death by Don (2013), her husband of seventy-four years, and her sister and brother-in-law, Dorothy and Robert Naden (2002).