Mavis Grace, age 92, of Huron, passed away on Monday, June 6, 2022 at Avantara in Huron, South Dakota. Her memorial service will be held at 11 AM on Tuesday, June 14, 2022 at First United Methodist Church in Huron with burial to follow at Restlawn Memory Gardens Cemetery. Visitation, with her family present, will be from 9 AM to the time of service at the church Tuesday morning.

Mavis Yvonne DeVries was born March 30, 1930, to Rozella (Johnston) and Arthur DeVries at the Krause farm northeast of Broadland, South Dakota.   Both her maternal and paternal grandmothers assisted with her birth. Mavis was baptized by the Reverend Susie Thompson at the Broadland Methodist Church in 1931.  The family lived on the farm until Mavis was 3 years old, when her father was forced to quit farming during the Dirty 30's.  Mavis remembers the dirt that moved in dark clouds over the farm. Gales of wind swept up the dry top soil into clouds of dust that blocked the sun. Dirt blew into their house in every "nook and cranny". She recalls her mother putting wet towels on the window sills to keep the dirt out.  Very quickly days turned into nights when the dirt clouds darkened the skies.

Other memories of the Dirty 30's include visiting her grandparents on Sundays and seeing the dirt piled so high in the fields that it nearly covered the fence posts.  Then, after the dirt and dust, came the grasshoppers. On trips from Huron to Broadland to visit grandparents, Mavis recollects her father, Art, stopping and cleaning grasshoppers out of his car radiator two or three times before the family arrived at the farm. On these weekend visits, one of Art's duties was to charge the glass batteries used for electricity on the farm. The windmill was the wind charger for the glass batteries and the family was fortunate to have electricity as early as 1919.

After leaving the farm, her father went to Sioux City, Iowa to attend refrigeration school and begin a new career.  Upon returning to South Dakota in 1934, he moved the family into a house at 5 ^th Street and Simmons Avenue in Huron.  When Art got a job with Costain's Appliance the family relocated to the V & V Apartments.  Art's salary at Costain's was $7.00 per week.  On Saturdays and Sundays he worked extra hours in order to pay the rent.  In 1935 her brother Richard was born.

Mavis attended kindergarten at the first Washington School, located where Huron Regional Medical Center is now.  In 1936 when she was in the first grade, the family moved to a home at 658 Arizona Avenue, and she attended Wilson Elementary School. Her sister Voneta was born in 1938.  Mavis attended Wilson School through the sixth grade. For grades seven through nine she went to Huron Junior High School, and she graduated from Huron High School in 1948.  Following high school she went to work for Morin Colton, a Huron grocery wholesaler as a bookkeeper.

On November 11, 1951 Mavis was united in marriage to Ernan G. Grace at the First United Methodist Church in Huron.  She continued her job at Morin Colton, but had to quit "when she started showing". (In 1951 Morin Colton became Park Grant.) Their son John was born on November 18 ^th , 1952.  At this time the family lived at 5 ^th Street and Montana Avenue.

In 1954 the family moved to Alpena and opened the Alpena Hardware Store located on Main Street. They lived in an apartment in the back of the store.  Their second son, David, was born on July 14, 1954 in Huron.  Rick, the youngest son, was born on March 8 ^th , 1958.  During this same time period, Ernan, his twin brother Ernest, and their father, Leslie Grace purchased the implement store in Alpena and renamed it Grace Implement.

The Ernan Grace family moved back to Huron in the fall of 1961 and resided in a trailer house at 6 ^th Street and Arizona.  Grace Implement and the Alpena Hardware Store were both sold in 1961.  After returning to Huron, Mavis resumed working at Park Grant and continued her employment there until it closed in 1985.  From 1987 until retiring in 2001, Mavis worked as a bookkeeper and post mistress at Lewis Drug.

In 1970 the Grace family moved the Jones house south of Huron to an acreage three miles west of Huron.  Mavis resided there until moving to her current residence at 929 Montana Avenue in 2005.

Ernan and Mavis's eldest son John had a heart attack while shoveling snow in 1983.  He had heart surgery, went into a coma and remained comatose until his death on September 18 ^th , 2001.

Mavis was a 60 plus year member of the First United Methodist Church and the Huron Area Senior Center.

She was preceded in death by her parents Arthur and Rozella, her mother-in-law and father-in-law Bernice and Leslie I. Grace, her husband Ernan from heart complications in 1996, her son John in 2001, her brother Richard and his wife Marsha DeVries, her sister Voneta and her husband John Freese, her brother-in-law Dr. Leslie I. Grace, Jr. and his wife Ardis, her sister-in-law Carolyn and her husband Jack Hyde, her brother-in-law Ernest Grace (Ernan's twin brother) and her special friend John Ingle.

She is survived by her sons David and Rick (Deb) Grace, Huron, her grandson Cody (Jamie) Grace, her great grandchildren, Peyton, Madelyn and Ashlyn Grace, all of Huron, her sister-in-law Ilah Grace of Chandler, Arizona and many nieces, nephews and friends.