Obituary: Nina Mintz

Nina Lucille (Lasley) Mintz was born Nov. 23, 1914, near Chanute, Kan., to Lee and Louise (Lefever) Lasley. She left this earth for her heavenly home March 29, 2014, from the ranch at Meeker.
Nina was oldest of three children growing up near Chanute and she was graduated from Chanute High School with the class of 1933.
Times were tough and she immediately began working to help the family make ends meet. Her parents and youngest brother moved to Colorado in 1939 and she stayed in Kansas working at the bank in Chanute. In 1940, she was offered a job at the bank in Meeker and came to Colorado to join her family.
Sometime later, while she was still working at the bank, someone from the Oldland General Store came to the bank looking for one of the girls in the bank to come and be a bookkeeper for the store. Nina took that job and worked there several years. After her daughter was born, she didn’t work away from home for the next six years.
In December 1956, after her daughter started school that fall, Bob White called from the Rio Blanco Abstract Company and asked Nina if she could help them out for about six weeks. She retired after almost 24 years.
It is rumored that when Nina moved from Kansas to Colorado, Homer Lee Mintz couldn’t live without her and he came from Kansas to Colorado as well. Lee and Nina were married May 25, 1941. Within a couple of years of their marriage they had the opportunity to buy a 160 acre ranch in Powell Park. They moved from Meeker to the ranch in December 1943. Later, another 80 acres located just west of the original 160 acres was purchased from Frank and Goldie Johnson. Forty acres were later sold and the remaining 200 acres is the ranch as it is today.
Nina and Lee raised Hereford cattle, hogs, beef, milk cows, chickens, turkeys, horses, hay, grain and a huge vegetable garden. Folks in the community may remember the generosity of the Mintzes sharing boxes of garden vegetables.
The hay on the Mintz ranch was put up in large part as a family operation the old-fashioned way. Cut with a sickle mower and stacked loose with Nina at the helm of the old power wagon lifting the hay for Lee to stack.
Nina was a member of the Meeker United Methodist Church since she came to Colorado in the 1940s. She was a Sunday School teacher, the treasurer for 24 years and a member of the United Methodist Women’s group.
In the community, she was active on the Fair Board, Rio Blanco County Cow Belles, treasurer for the Powell Park Ditch Co., and she was honored by the Special District Association of Colorado for her 20 years of leadership and dedication to the local cemetery district. She was also a charter member of the Meeker Investment Group.
After retirement, Lee and Nina did quite a lot of traveling. They went to New England in the fall, Yellowstone Park in the winter, Williamsburg and Washington D.C., Hawaii, New Orleans with Mississippi River boat cruise and Alaska, to mention a few. Other activities they enjoyed were picnics, hunting arrowheads, cooking breakfast on some creek bank or a fish fry on the river’s edge. Nina enjoyed fixing fruits and vegetables all on the old coal stove.
Nina is survived by: a daughter, Janice Weinholdt of Brighton, Colo.; granddaughter Kalene Weinholdt and her fiance, Chris Reidinger, of Meeker; brother Harold and Lois Lasley of Portland, Ore.; and several nieces, nephews, and cousins.
Nina was preceded in death by: her parents; her husband, Homer Lee; and a brother, Merle Lasley.
An end-of-life celebration was held April 4, 2014, at the United Methodist Church. A memorial fund has been set up at the Grant Mortuary.