Sally Anne Muriel “SAM” Schmidt

January 28, 1938 – May 7, 2024

Sally Anne Muriel Schmidt (nee Davies) passed away from cancer on May 7, 2024, at the age of 86, after brief stay at Battleford District Care Centre. She made a valiant effort to stay at her beloved farm until the end, but it was not quite to be.

Sally was born (1938) in North Battleford & raised on the Davies family farm near Rockhaven, the fifth of eight children born to Ben & Agnes (Bryce) Davies. She had a memorable childhood, growing up in a crowded four roomed farm house, where there never seemed to be room for her.  In her younger years she slept on the trunk at the end of her parent’s bed, & when she got too long for that, they put a chair at the foot end to make the trunk longer. One of the highlights of Sally’s childhood was a long train ride to Victoria, BC with her Mom to visit relatives in the early 1940’s.  She was only four, but the new dresses made for the trip, the “dixie cups” in the bathroom on the train & the horror of them making her sit in a puddle, for a picture, in her brand new bathing suit made an impression.  There were many stories of walking the three miles to Willowview School with her siblings, uphill – both ways of course!  On a memorable occasion the five kids & their Dad were trapped at the neighbor’s house for a few days because the creek between school & home flooded unexpectedly, & on another she & her younger sister arrived at school to find the building full of smoke. Sally grabbed her sister & went outside, refusing to go back in when her teacher demanded it.  She argued with the teacher until she was allowed to use the phone in the teacherage & called her Dad to come & shut the school down.  Sally always hated the smell of coal smoke after that. On another occasion her & her sister were trapped at school for days in a snowstorm until her brother came with the team & sleigh to pick them up. It was her last trip to school, she then went to work for a family by Cloan as a domestic.

In the fall of 1955 Sally’s sister had invited her to go to the show with her & her boyfriend, & her boyfriend brought along his brother, Tony.  Although they never went to that show together, that was the beginning of a long friendship, as she married Anton “Tony” Schmidt in 1957. They started their marriage in Rocky Mountain House, AB, where Tony worked in the logging camp at Nordegg, & Sally worked in the Spoor’s Meat Market in Rocky while staying with her sister & her family.  Her boss at Spoor’s fired her after her marriage, so she got a job doing books for Ross’ Garage until spring.

Tony & Sally moved to Rockhaven where Tony worked at the Pool Elevator, & they lived in a little building that used to be Matt Alexander’s meat market. Over the next years they moved to Cut Knife, & then North Battleford, where they settled raising their first three children Leonard, Leona & Leon while Tony pulled wrenches at Wettlaufer’s Garage & Victory Motors. They later partnered in Risling’s Royalite, on the four corners, before buying & running Tony’s Shell Service across the street for four years. It was a true partnership, with Tony handling mechanic & towing duties & Sally working the pumps, the till, & doing the books, not to mention running the household.

In her spare time Sally played ball with the local “Blue Bells,” which the opposition team called the “ding-alings.”  She admitted that she was not renowned for her running skills.  Many stories were also told of her memorable times coaching her son Leon’s baseball team, & how she was volunteered for the job after criticizing the current coach.  Tony & Sally bought a cabin & a boat at Cochin, so the family of five enjoyed summers at the lake.  In one memorable story Sally came back to the cabin to find shattered glass (with nothing obviously broken) & her brother-in-law’s boat missing, she didn’t think much of it, as he sometimes lent it out, but it turned out the Meota bank robbers had just used it to escape, crossing the river to the Lloyd highway, & escaping to Edmonton!

In the 1970’s Tony & Sally purchased Sally’s dad’s farm near Rockhaven & took up farming once more. While Tony did the mechanic work & fieldwork, Sally was right there helping him in the field, while also doing the cooking, cleaning, truck driving, paperwork & of course, picking rocks. By hand. In the late 1970’s their children sent them on their first official “honeymoon” to British Columbia, where they came home with an afterthought, their last child, Lea, was born the next summer.  While running the farm, they never went too far away, but they made time for visits with family around Saskatchewan & Alberta, & many family campouts with music & laughter happened through the years.

Sally was an extraordinary woman. She was tough, strong, funny, & talented. Growing up on the farm, running a business, then running a farm shaped her into the woman she was. She never took any guff from anyone. Her sense of humour drew people to her at family functions as she was always surrounded by nieces & nephews listening to her “babble on”. Sally officially welcomed Leon’s wife, Carey, into the family in 1995 & the grandkids Kaley, Jesse & Jared, came fast & furious.

Sally was talented in so many ways, she learned to play piano & guitar by ear & had a great voice. Sally loved her grandkids, & when they were small many hours were spent in the bedroom with her playing guitar & the grandkids pounding on an ice cream pail, tambourine & piano. She was always remembered for transfixing small children with her long rendition of “Froggy Went a Courtin” on guitar at family gatherings, & did a mean “Itsy Bitsy Spider” as well. When Lea was little, Sally used to take her around on the garden tractor while tilling the garden or mowing the lawn singing “Round & Round the Garden.” Many new verses were made up over the years that have long since been forgotten. Sally was known for her writing, including songs, writing many stories in the “Along the Old 29” history book, many humorous history book meeting minutes, poems, family memories & personalized birthday poems to put in cards to her children & grandchildren.  She loved to make quilts, & became known for her blue jeans ones, occasionally embroidering cartoon characters & airplanes on them for her children & grandchildren.  Sally loved to take pictures, but she only had a point & shoot camera, & no photography skills, so many photos of wildlife were taken, & to this day no one has been able to find most of the animals in the photos. Although she always loved scrapbooking, she took it up seriously in later years & numerous albums were carefully crafted using every single scrap of paper (rarely did one scrap ever hit the garbage!) Sally was an avid reader as well, reading everything from local history books, old moldy cowboy stories & her beloved Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb series.  She enjoyed both fictional & true crime TV shows, as well as any musical program she came across.  Sally loved to garden, creating elaborate landscaping with her daughter Leona, using all those field rocks she picked over the years, & several that had to be dragged in with a tractor.  She used to take her grandkids out to help with yard work & many a wheelbarrow & golf cart ride were given.  When Sally’s health slowed her down, she continued to garden on her deck, planting flowers, onions & beet greens in pots for her enjoyment while she went out & got “fresh air.”

Tony & Sally slowed down over the later years, but with the help of neighbors & their children they kept farming. Tony passed on in the fall of 2019, making it to see his 45th crop & 62 years of marriage.  After Tony’s death new additions were officially added to the family, her oldest granddaughter Kaley married Sam, & had their daughter Palmer.  Jesse then married Hayden & had their daughter Drew, & soon after Jared brought along her first great-grandson Beckett.  Sally enjoyed her young great-grandchildren’s antics immensely, whether through photos, video or in person, & in family get-togethers frequently pulled out the classic “Itsy Bitsy Spider.”

With help Sally continued on farming, this would have been her 50th year farming at the farm she grew up on.

Sally is survived by her sons Leonard and Leon (Carey), her daughter Lea Schmidt, her grandchildren Kaley (Sam) McAllister, Jesse (Hayden) Friedrich, and Jared Schmidt, and great grandchildren Palmer McAllister, Drew Friedrich and Beckett LaFreniere. Also left to remember Sally are her sisters Peggy Donison & Sharon (Edward) Heilman, sister-in-law’s Helen Davies & Dorothy Davies in addition to in-laws Helga Schmidt, Mary Mazurek, Betty Robertson, Sandy Schmidt, Minard Schmidt, John (Barbara) Schmidt, Susan Schmidt, as well as numerous nieces and nephews.

Sally is predeceased by her husband of 62 ½ years Anton (Tony) Schmidt, her daughter Leona Schmidt, parents Agnes (Bryce) & Ben Davies Jr., siblings Stan Davies, Shirley (George) Schmidt, Dave Davies, Bev (Bud) Bailey and Patty Davies, brother in law Roy Donison, nephew Gary Davies, as well as in-laws Simon & Veronica Schmidt, Margaret Schmidt, Valentine Schmidt, Ann (Nix) Ste Marie, Gus Schmidt, Joe Schmidt, Paul Schmidt, Rose (Clem) Moser, Ralph Schmidt, Horace Mazurek, Tom Robertson, and nephews Gary Ste Marie, Marvin Robertson & Dale Robertson, as well as several grand nephews and nieces.

A special thank you to my neighbors, especially Mary Scherman, the Hoffmans, and Ida Dillabough, who gave my family support, rides and vehicles while I was at home, in the hospital & District Care.  Thanks to Erika & Jesse from Home Care for their support, supplies, & suggestions, & to Scott for organizing it all.  Thank you to Dr. Holtzhausen & all the staff of BUH for their excellent care on my many visits, and to the wonderful staff of Battleford District Care Centre who went the extra mile to give me comfort in my last weeks. And mostly thanks to my family, my home caregivers, the best homecare givers in the world. By, Sally Schmidt.

In lieu of flowers donations can be made to BUH Home Care Po Box 1358 North Battleford, SK S9A 3L8, or the Battleford District Care Centre Po Box 69 Battleford, SK S0M 0E0. The service will be held for Sally at the Town of Battleford Cemetery, Wednesday, May 29, 2024, 10:00a.m, everyone is welcome to attend.

Condolences for the family can be made at www.eternalmemoriesfuneral.ca Funeral arrangements have been entrusted to Eternal Memories Funeral Service & Crematorium – Larissa Wack Apprentice Funeral Director, Trevor Watts Funeral Director.

• Date : 2024-05-24
• Location : North Battleford, Sk