"Jim, we am so sorry for your loss. We did not know she was ill. We pray you will find comfort and peace knowing your class mates care."
In loving memory of
Avis Louise Pieper
November 30, 1942 - April 15, 2019
Avis Louise Pieper was born on November 30, 1942 at St. Mary's Hospital in Waverly, Iowa. He parents were Lawrence and Elise Heine. She has an older brother, Dr. John Heine of Kalispell, Montana. Avis grew up on a family farm nine miles outside of Waverly where she learned about farming from her father. How to shoot, hunt, trap and skin muskrats from John her older brother. She began attending a one-room country school house at the age of 4 and then graduated from Waverly High School in 1960.
She attended the University of Iowa, singing with Simon Estes and the Old Gold Singers. During the summer of 1961, Avis acted and sang in a summer stock theater on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, where she was offered and turned down a contract to perform on Broadway.
She attended nursing school at Iowa Methodist School of Nursing, graduating nursing school exactly 40 years after her mother. She worked as a surgical nurse at IMH, next as a summer camp nurse in Boone, Iowa. She had a career in Nursing, co-founding, Heartland Medical Research in 1995.
Avis married and was the mother on Allyson Stewart of Kansas City, Missouri and Adam Burr of Des Moines, Iowa. They divorced in 1989. She later met and married former sweetheart, James Pieper of Colfax, Iowa in 1998 and became the second mother to Brian, Clint, Garret, Kevin, and Logan and grandmother to Taylor, Devyn, Cameron, Kamri, and Christopher.
Avis died at her home in Colfax surrounded by family after a short battle with cancer of the colon and liver. She was preceded in death by her parents and her son Adam.
Memorial services will be held on Monday, May 20, 2019 at 1:30 p.m. at the Colfax First Baptist Church. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to Every Step Hospice in Knoxville, Iowa.