Nelda Earl Ricker died at Ogeechee Area Hospice in Statesboro, GA, on Thursday, August 1, 2024. She was born in Ventura, California, a town on the coast, but she grew up in Las Vegas, back when it was still a small city.
As a child, Nelda’s beloved grandma Mrs. Daisy Jones of Vancouver, WA was the most important person in her life.
After getting good grades in high school, she went to Provo, Utah, to go to Brigham Young University, where she met Curtis, the man she would later marry.
The LDS Temple in Manti, Utah, was where they got married. As owners of a trading post in Lybrook, NM, next to the Navajo reservation, for the first year of their marriage, they had a great time.
She and her husband moved close to Richfield, Utah, after he finished from BYU. He taught for Sevier School District and Snow College there. Over the next six summers, they went back to Provo to get more schooling at BYU. Curtis was working on his PhD at Illinois State University in Normal-Bloomington, IL, a cute college town with lots of nice parks.
His family moved there from Utah. Later, the family moved to Statesboro, where her husband started working as a teacher at Georgia Southern, a college with about 6,000 students at the time. While they waited for their home loan to close, they spent the first month in Georgia in state parks with their pop-up tent.
She loved going to the library with her boys and camping with her family in the Great Smoky Mountains and state parks in Georgia and South Carolina.
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She also taught her children to love reading and learning by doing the same things she loved. She finished Georgia Southern with a bachelor’s degree and some courses toward a master’s degree. Her favorite subject was math.
On Clint’s last day of work as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Hamburg, Germany, in 2004, Nelda went there with her husband. She and Curtis took a trip to Germany, Denmark, and Austria in 2009.
Chris got his bachelor’s degree at Georgia Tech and his master’s degree at the University of Utah. Clint got his bachelor’s degree at the University of Georgia.
Curt, Nelda’s son, got his bachelor’s degree at Georgia Southern University and his master’s degree at Kennesaw State. All three of my sons now work in technology areas after a lot of self-training.
Her husband, Dr. Curtis Ricker, and three children—Curt Ricker of Statesboro and Cobb County, GA; Chris (Jennifer) of Columbus, GA; and Clint (Sarah) of Lavonia, GA, and London, England—are left to mourn her death. Grace, CJ, Libby, Gavin, Eleanor, Henry, and Lucy are her seven wonderful grandkids.
The family will receive visitors at the Statesboro Funeral Home on August 10, 2024, from 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm.
