Verda Jean Baird

Verda Jean Baird died on October 5, 2024, at Parkview Care Center. She was born in Burlington, Iowa on October 11, 1930, the daughter of Rudolph and Esther (Wagner) Johnson. Visitation will be at Behner Funeral Home 5:00 pm. - 7:00 pm, Thursday, October 10. The service will be 10:30 am, Friday at Behner Funeral Home with burial in Evergreen Cemetery. Officiating is by Al Coffin.

 As a senior in Burlington High School, she was the bookkeeper for the high school and the two junior high cafeterias. Following graduation in 1948 she was employed at McKessons in Burlington. After moving to Fairfield, she was self-employed bookkeeper for a hog corporation, followed by a children’s clothing store, a spraying service, a retired individual as well as keeping their own farm records.

She married Norman “Barney” Baird on March 6, 1954, in Burlington at Harrison Avenue Methodist Church. They rented farms in the Yarmouth/Morning Sun, Iowa area until purchasing their farm in Cedar Township Jefferson County in 1962. She enjoyed driving a tractor during the planting and harvest seasons often recalling unloading “on the go” with her 3-year-old son on the tractor seat beside her with no tractor nor combine cabs, surviving under God’s big blue skies. She monitored the crop dryer and assisted in sorting fat cattle and hogs. She spent many hours mowing their expansive lawn and took pride in keeping weeds under control. She enjoyed company of family and friends as well as the Sunday drives and dinners out with Barney. Verda liked making homemade pies for Barney. She loved to read, was not a TV watcher. She recently completed for their 3 children “Our 65 years of Farming” with yearly diaries and pictures of all machinery, cars, trucks owned and costs of each. They celebrated their 65th anniversary shortly before “Barney died in June 2019.

From 1964-2004 she was a member of Bethesda and Fairfield Methodist Women. When Bethesda church closed in 1977, she published that church’s history and sold 210 copies.

Verda was a long-time volunteer that started in 1973 with the organizing of the Bicentennial Commission where she gathered data to be microfilmed by the Latter-Day Saints. For the Sesquicentennial in 1989, she published “Highlights from Out of the Past” historical booklets, compiled from her “Out of the Past” columns in the Ledger.

She was one of 52 charter members of the Jefferson County Genealogical Society organized in October 1972. She wrote the “Family” Roots” column for the Ledger from 1988 to 2000. She kept busy walking all the Jefferson County cemeteries updating old records and typing courthouse births, deaths, marriages, estate records that were bound into books for the library shelves. She answered over 4,600 researchers hunting their Jefferson County roots from 1976 to 2010 from 50 states including Jordan, Spain, England, Australia and Sweden. Never a dull week.

After acquiring a used Apple computer in 1988 she compiled an index to all the 79 rural cemeteries, followed by a separate volume of Evergreen Cemetery records which had never been published before. She has a total of 25 hardbound volumes on the local library shelves. She also published eight branches of their own family booklets- copies went to the Burlington Iowa Library. In December 2019 she filed for the last time all clipping of Historical items into the 3-drawer historical A-Z lateral files at the Fairfield Library.

She is survived by her two sons Randy (Jan) Baird and Ron (Terri) Baird both of Fairfield and daughter Diane (Ken) Klosterman of Cedar Rapids, five grandchildren: Mindy (Kevin) Stultz, Brian (Brooke) Baird, Patrick (Erica) Baird, Anna (Matt) Luke and Roger (Stacey) Baird and also 14 great grandchildren. Her husband, her parents and only brother Verle (Marge) Johnson are deceased.

Memorials can be made to the Jefferson County Conservation Nature Center or the Fairfield United Methodist Church.

The family appreciates the care from The Oaks Assisted Living, Parkview Care Center, Hospice Compassus and Jefferson County Health Center.

 Behner Funeral Home is helping the family with arrangements.