Elizabeth “Bess” Ann Cornwell, a longtime resident of the upper Prairie Creek area outside Joseph, died at a Boise care center. She was 87.

Graveside services will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday, June 12, at Joseph Cemetery.

Born the youngest of six children in Protivin, Iowa, to Frank and Anna Pecinovsky, Mrs. Cornwell was reared by her extended family after losing her mother when she was 3.

She first came to Wallowa County in 1942 to visit her brother, Ben, who was serving in the U.S. Army. Here she met and married the late Arnold Byron Cornwell in 1943.

She didn’t leave the county until returning to Iowa in the 1980s.

Mrs. Cornwell was a working partner on their ranch for 56 years, working the fields as well as creating a home for Mr. Cornwell and their sons, Jim and Jerry. She was at home in the kitchen and had hunting and fishing stories to tell as well. She delighted in her grandchildren and the accomplishments of her sons.

From 1951 to 1959, she was a spotter for the U.S. Air Force Ground Observer Corps and continued to notice the sound of airplanes well into the final years of her life.

She loved the outdoors, watching for elk and deer grazing around their ranch house. The Cornwells belonged to the Little Swiss Rovers Good Sam Club and snowbirded in Arizona for 25 years.

Mrs. Cornwell is survived by her sons, Jim and his wife, Linda, of Boise, and Jerry and his wife, Connie, of Evergreen, Colo., three grandchildren and numerous nieces and nephews.

She was preceded in death by her husband of 63 years, four brothers, Edward, Alois, William and Benjamin, and a sister, Carolyn Hovorka.

The family asks that instead of flowers memorial contributions be made to the Alzheimer’s Association, Wallowa Memorial Hospital or a charity. Bollman Funeral Home of Enterprise is in charge of arrangements.