Ellamae Moseley age 99, formerly of the Broken Bow area passed away February 29, 2024, at the Central Nebraska Veterans Home in Kearney, NE.
Funeral Services will be held on Thursday, March 7, 2024, at 1:00 PM at the United Methodist Church in Broken Bow, NE with Pastor Phil Sloat officiating. Burial will follow in the Lone Tree Cemetery at Weissert, NE. Memorials are suggested to Broken Bow United Methodist Church. A visitation will take place on Thursday, March 7th from 10:30 AM to service time at 1:00 PM. With lunch being served at 11:30 AM at the United Methodist Church in Broken Bow. Govier Brothers Mortuary are in charge of arrangements. An online guest book may be signed at govierbrothers.com.
The last survivor among Ralph and Elsie (Pirnie) Spencer’s 11 children, Ellamae was born on April 23, 1924.
Ellamae and her siblings grew up in a three-bedroom farmhouse on the banks of Clear Creek west of Weissert, where she attended school through eighth grade.
As a young woman, she and her sister Frances moved to Grand Island during World War II where they were employed at the Cornhusker Army Ammunition Plant.
There, Ellamae, Frances, and hundreds of co-workers assembled bombs and artillery shells to support the war effort. She was prominent in a feature story and photos by a military publication at that time. In more recent years the exhibit was enjoyed by Americans nationwide in a traveling display of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., where it is permanently housed.
While she served the war effort from Grand Island, Russell Moseley of Broken Bow was aboard the destroyer USS Sigourney in the Pacific Theater against Japan. In his five-year enlistment he participated in the Battle for Leyte Gulf, still the largest naval conflict in history, and many other engagements. He left his studies and the football team at Kearney State Teachers College (now UNK) and raced to join the Navy in reaction to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.
Following service to their country in very different yet oddly similar capacities, the couple met upon Russell’s return from the fighting, courted, and were married on February 3, 1948. Together they raised sons Steve, Jim, and Brad.
Until old enough to qualify for work at the ordnance plant, she was a manual switchboard operator at North Platte in the iconic ‘number please’ era of early American telephone communication.
Always up for adventure, Ellamae and Russell spent many winters in Texas, cruised the Caribbean, toured Germany when son Brad was stationed there in the Army, enjoyed Yellowstone and other national parks many times and visited both coasts, including a two-week family vacation to the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair.
Following Russell’s January 7, 2011, death at the Veterans Home in Grand Island, Ellamae remained a member there and later moved with the new facility to Kearney.
While a member in Grand Island, her lifelong adventurous spirit manifested when she gleefully said ‘yes’ to a thrilling, barnstorming flight aboard a two-place, open-cockpit aerobatic biplane (that’s her in the photo) and also took a rollicking airboat ride skimming over the Platte.
Ellamae was a proud member in good standing of the American Rosie the Riveter Association as well as the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars auxiliaries in Broken Bow.
She and Russell, owners for years of Moseley’s IGA in Genoa and later Moseley’s IGA of Lexington, were also longtime members of the Broken Bow United Methodist Church to which memorials are suggested.
She is survived by sons Steve (Norma), Jim (Mary), daughter-in-law Ana, nine grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren.
Ellamae was also preceded in death by daughter-in-law Sandy (January 11, 1997) and son Brad (February 3, 2021).
