Janice Rose Alpers

Janice Rose Alpers, age 81, of Fonda, Iowa died June 13, 2023 in Carroll, Iowa. Funeral services will take place Monday, June 19, 2023 at 12:00 p.m. at the Mahaney Funeral Home 202 King Street in Fonda (formerly First Lutheran Church) . Visitation will take place one hour prior to the service at the funeral home. Burial will be in the Cedar Cemetery in Fonda. The Mahaney Funeral Home in Fonda is in charge of the arrangements. Janice Rose was born December 3, 1941, the first of Rose and Robert Siedler’s four children. The family lived in her birthplace, Fort Dodge, Iowa, until moving 40 miles to Fonda when Jan was in the fourth grade. Growing up in Fonda, she was inseparable from Carol, her one-year-younger sister and best friend; doted on her only brother, Bob; and nurtured Kathy, 11 years younger. At Fonda Public School, Jan played and loved softball and six-on-six basketball, which inspired her to earn her bachelor’s degree in education at Tarkio College, then become a physical education teacher. For more than 40 years she shared her passion for sports with young students, first at Jewel South Hamilton, then for 30 years in Rockwell City public schools. After retiring from Rockwell City in 1997, she taught PE at Our Lady of Good Counsel School in Fonda for five years. On June 25, 1967, Jan married Gib Alpers. For the next half century, they lived in Fonda with a menagerie of rescued dogs and cats. What started with an antique car collection evolved into their passion for preserving small-town Iowa history, especially from the 1920s and 1930s. They travelled the Iowa countryside for all things nostalgic from by-gone times. As their collection and people’s interest in it grew, they attentively put many of the items on display in a building on Main Street they named the Fonda Museum. For about 35 years, Jan and Gib opened the museum when asked so that class reunions and others interested in the history of Fonda and beyond could step back in time as ragtime rang from the player piano. In addition to her love for sports, animals, and historic preservation, Jan loved children. She was a devoted aunt to her nine nieces and nephews. She looked after them when they spent parts of their childhood summers in Fonda. She introduced them to golf on Fonda’s nine holes, taught them to drive a clutch in her red MG Midget convertible, delighted them with bed-of-the-pickup rides for after-dinner ice cream, and built a whimsical playhouse in her backyard, where her great-nieces and nephews also escaped to for games of Old Maid. Jan enjoyed a robust life until the last few years, when she began to incur health issues. Jan died on June 13, 2023. She was preceded in death by her parents and her husband, Gib. She is survived by her siblings: Carol Mullen and her husband, John, of Omaha, Neb.; Bob Siedler and his wife, Irene, of Kansas City, Mo; and Kathy Siedler of Atlantic, Iowa; nine nieces and nephews; many great-nieces and nephews; cousins; and friends. Jan was an honest, generous, hard-working woman. She will be greatly missed.

Janice Rose Alpers

December 3, 1941 - June 13, 2023