- Date Of Birth: February 24, 1917
- Date Of Death: March 9, 2013
- State: Idaho
Gwendolyn Prince Krahn
Gwendolyn Prince Krahn, 96, a resident of Newbury Park, California, and formerly of Fairfield, passed away March 9, 2013 in Newbury Park, California.
Gwendolyn (Gwen) Prince was born in Gooding, Idaho on February 24, 1917. She was born in the family home and was premature. The doctor told her family she would not survive, but her Aunt Annie Prince put her in a shoe box on the oven door to keep her warm and she survived for another 96 years. Gwen grew up on the family farm and rode to school in a wagon pulled by horses and in the winter they rode in a sled. She graduated from high school in Gooding and went to nursing school in Idaho Falls, Idaho at the LDS Hospital where she graduated as a registered nurse in 1938. Gwen says of her time growing up in Gooding, “We had many family dinners; our homes were all in the same community so we had many friends and neighbors that we grew up with”.
During Gwen’s last year of nursing school, Ben Krahn proposed to her. After working as a charge nurse in the hospital at Idaho Falls she returned home to care for her ill Mother and work at the Gooding Hospital. Ben Krahn told Gwen that he had waited long enough and she became Gwendolyn Prince Krahn in a ceremony held in her folk’s home on October 5, 1939. Gwen recounts in her life history, “I resolved I would never marry a farmer but I ended up doing it.” Gwen moved to Fairfield, Idaho to live with Ben on their farm for all of her 44 years of married life. She had many experiences both as a farm wife and mother and as a nurse. There were many times when Gwen was called to give medical care as a health care provider and good neighbor. Fairfield was an isolated rural community with the closes hospital or doctor over an hour away.
Gwen lived all of her married life of 44 years in Fairfield, Idaho and she thought that is where she would spend the rest of her life. She had once been told in a blessing that she would live in many communities and that isn’t what she had planned. After Ben died she ended up moving to several communities in Idaho and California with her son David and daughter-in-law Pam and lived with them and their children Bert, Tony, Becky, Taylor and Emily.
She is survived by a daughter Ellen and husband George Galvan, a son David and wife Pam Krahn and two daughter-in-laws Nila Krahn and Janice Krahn and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
She was preceded in death by her husband Ben Krahn, sons Wallace Krahn and Kent Krahn and a grandson Kevin Krahn. Gwen lived an exemplary life and leaves us with this advice, “Do the best we can and I know that through prayer and effort on our part everything will come out all right.”
