Carmen Fay Schorg

Carmen Fay (Fletcher) Schorg passed away Monday, January 31 ^st in Aberdeen, SD surrounded by her family.

Funeral services will be held on Saturday at 2:00 PM in the Garden City United Methodist Church with The Reverend Mark Tracy officiating.  Visitation will be held 1 hours preceding services in the Church.  Linda Stern will be the pianist with singing by the congregation.  Burial will follow in the Garden City Cemetery.  Following the interment, a light refreshment will be served in the Church fellowship area.

She was born May 1, 1960 in Watertown as the first child of Wayne and JoAnn (Hammer) Fletcher of Garden City.  She grew up on the family farm at Garden City with her younger sister and brother.

4-H, band, choir, piano, academics, and friends were recipients of her smiles, time, and attention in school.  Carmen graduated from Clark High School in 1978.

In high school she met the love of her life, Alan Schorg on a blind date.  They started dating when she was a junior and continued as Carmen went to SDSU at Brookings.  In January of 1980, she and Alan got engaged and she continued to work on her degree.  Their wedding was held July 18, 1981 in the Garden City United Methodist Church.  Carmen and Alan rented a converted one-room school house just north of Clark and spent their first summer together there before she returned to college in the fall and came home on weekends.  Their sons, James and Joshua added to their lives and slightly slowed her college attendance.  In the fall of 1983, Carmen went back to Brookings to finish the last semester of her degree and graduated in December of 1983 with a B.S. in Mathematics from SDSU.

With 2 little boys in tow, they moved to Selby in the fall of 1986.  First, they lived in a small rented home and then they purchased a place of their own.  Life got busy as the boys grew and Carmen took on various jobs in the community.  She worked as a bookkeeper for a business in Selby, substitute teacher, bookkeeper at a motel, clerk in a grocery store and then worked as the City Finance Officer for the city of Selby for 7 years.  She also used her love of sewing to sew clothes for her family and some outside sewing jobs.

Carmen grew up in the United Methodist Church as Fletcher kids always had.  She continued faithfully on that path as she grew and moved.  Carmen was a certified lay speaker in the United Methodist Church and conducted church services to fill needs for Sunday morning services.  She was a constant member of the Selby United Methodist Church and served on various committees.

Carmen and Alan went on a big adventure with her sister and brother-in-law by sharing a trip to London, England in the spring of 2011.  Oh for the museums, food, look RIGHT when crossing the street, "Mind the Gap" on the Tube, and service at St. Paul's Cathedral.

As her health started to change what she could take on, she still stayed part of the community by helping out as she could.  As mini strokes started to impact her ability to do the math that had always come naturally to her, she came to a point where the Finance Officer duties just weren't possible anymore and she left that job to others.

Carmen went through a long process of trying to find out why she was having strokes, getting better and then having another stroke.  Finally, about 5 years ago the cause was determined as a rare vascular disease and that led to her having 2 vascular brain surgeries.  These surgeries gave her a longer life but much damage had already been done and other strokes limited her mobility and speech.  Carmen has lived in the care facility, Prairie Heights in Aberdeen for the past 5 years where she was able to enjoy as much of life as possible.  Her smile has always been her hallmark and she is well known for it by the staff and other residents.

Carmen is survived by her loving husband, Alan Schorg, sons James (Jackie) Schorg and Joshua (Julie) and granddaughter Jordyn, her mother JoAnn Fletcher of Garden City, brother Evan (Mona) Fletcher of Garden City, and sister Crystal (Stuart) Roemmich of Eden Prairie, MN.  She is also survived by father-in-law Ronald Schorg and brother-in-law Lonnie Schorg, both of Clark, sisters-in-law Pam (Gene) Cole of Willow Lake, Christine (Vernon) Tarbox of Bradley, Cheryl Schorg of Aberdeen, and Mary Lentz of Sturgis.

She was preceded in death by her father Wayne Fletcher, grandparents Everett A. and Lona Fletcher and John M. and Alma Hammer and mother-in-law, Evelyn Schorg.

Memorials are preferred to the Garden City United Methodist Church in lieu of flowers.

The Furness Funeral Home of Clark is serving the family where there is an on-line registry at www.furnessfuneralhome.com