Each of the three women killed last week when indiscriminate gunfire erupted in a residential neighborhood of Farmington, New Mexico, left a unique mark in the community that spanned generations
Longtime Farmington, N.M., preschool teacher Melody Ivie, far right, poses with some of her students, including 4-year-old Jerron Pickering, top center. Jerron's father, Sheldon Pickering, grew up a few houses from Ivie and her family. Ivie was among three older women who died May 15, 2023, when an 18-year-old gunman began indiscriminately shooting at vehicles in his Farmington neighborhood. SANTA FE, N.M. — — Gwendolyn Dean Schofield hoped to live to 100, and she was nearly there.
Schofield, who grew up in the Great Depression and became a teacher during World War II, was a month shy of her 98th birthday. Daughter Melodie Ivie, who ran a preschool with the catchy name “Ivie League,” was 73. The woman they stopped to help, Shirley Voita, was a 79-year-old retired school nurse and regular at morning Mass who volunteered to help people file their taxes.
Schofield began teaching in the remote lakeside town of Valier, Montana, amid a shortage of teachers during World War II. There she met her first husband, Raymond Dean, a crop-duster pilot. They married in 1946 and had four children. At 97, Dean said, his grandmother remained vibrant. Relatives at the memorial service said Schofield did so by living with a “loving mind devoid of anger and criticism” and a “forgiving heart.”Ivie followed in her mother’s footsteps as an educator. For decades, “Mrs. Ivie” welcomed hundreds of Farmington children into her home, where she ran the Ivie League preschool and prepared generations of kids for kindergarten.
“That’s what your kids will remember,” Pickering remembered Ivie saying. “So say yes to the little things when you can.”Later in life, the couple served as senior missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Ghana and offered to support students afterward, relatives said. Ivie’s husband died last year.
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