Meta Mary Wurth Lux

We live in a competitive society.Many look for the biggest, the fastest, the richest, the “best.” A quiet life of service is not esteemed as especially remarkable. But the quiet, responsible, dependable, spiritually active person provides the stable foundation for our society’s ability to thrive and survive. A vigil service with the Rosary being said will be Friday, May 25, 2018 at 6:00 p.m. at Holy Spirit Church, 201 44th St. South. The funeral liturgy will be Saturday, May 26, 2018 at 11:00 a.m. also at Holy Spirit. Schnider Funeral Home is handling the arrangements. Meta Mary Wurth Lux, “Meta Mary” to her family or just “Meta,” was that person, and so much more. She was born February 11, 1930 on the Wurth family farm at Zurich, Montana. She was born several weeks prematurely and not breathing, but her grandmother Meta, attending her birth, took the newborn, hurried her outside and placed her on a snowbank to shock her into breath. It worked. She was so tiny she was placed in a flannel-lined shoebox and put inside the banked coal/wood stove to keep her warm--the “country-style” incubator. She was named after both her grandmothers, Meta Jahns Raether and Mary Heissel Wurth, all of Le Mars, Iowa. She joined her older brother Donald, and several years later her sister, Carol completed the family. Meta displayed significant musical talent, from early grade school she was a lifelong pianist. She gave recitals while in high school and college, private lessons to students in Great Falls, played at functions, and wore out her classical music sheets. Her favorite pieces were from technically demanding composer Frederic Chopin, and she furthermore considered his mistress Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, aka the novelist George Sand, as “that hussy French homewrecker.” When attending piano concerts, she liked to be seated where she could see the pianist’s hands at work. She attended Zurich schools, and graduated in 1949 from Chinook High School. She met the love of her life, Richard “Dick” Lux, on the school bus. He was two years younger, from a neighboring farm/ranch family in Paradise Valley near Zurich, but he already knew who she was, having seen her while he was in grade school. They went together while in high school. She went off to college in Havre to study music and elementary education; Dick proposed to her at the bus stop in Chinook when she came home for a visit. They were married April 18, 1951 at St. Gabriel’s Catholic Church in Chinook. She and Dick were married 27 years before his sudden death in a traffic accident in Wolf Point in 1979. They raised a family of three children, Cheryl, Rick, and Patti, in Virginia while Dick was in the Army, in California while Dick worked for United Airlines, in Great Falls and then Wolf Point, Montana where she and Dick owned a vending machine company, Modern Music. After Dick’s death, she ran the business and then sold it and moved back to Great Falls to be near her family. She was an excellent bookkeeper, both before her marriage and for their own business. She worked in the Veterans Affairs office at the former College of Great Falls, and as a teacher’s aide at Mountain View School. Meta was always active in her children’s schools, volunteering for church activities, and served as treasurer for many organizations, among them the Parish Council of Catholic Women and Catholic Daughters. Meta was a member of Holy Spirit Parish in Great Falls. She volunteered many hours for fund-raising activities, such as card parties, bake sales, dinners, auctions, especially for children’s Catholic education. In her later years, working in the funeral reception luncheons was one of her “corporal works of mercy.” She loved her many friends and their activities together. At age 88, she lived vibrantly and independently in her own home, drove her friends to gatherings, had such an active life one needed to make an appointment to see her, as she was always “on the go”, loved her time spent with family and friends, and is greatly missed by all. Meta passed away Easter Sunday, April 1, 2018 at Peace Hospice in Great Falls from post-surgical complications. She was preceded in death by her husband, Richard F. “Dick” Lux; her parents Oswald “Ozzie” Joseph Wurth and Alma Elsie Raether Wurth; and her brother Donald Wurth. Meta is survived by her sister, Carol Wurth (Al) Verploegen of Great Falls; children Cheryl Lux (John Cobb) of Augusta, Richard G. “Ric” Lux of Glendale, AZ, and Patricia “Patti” (Perry) Lux Bergen of Billings; grandchildren Adam Cobb, Rikki Lux, Dustin Lux, Jacob Bergen, and Elizabeth Cobb; and all her numerous and much-loved nieces and nephews from the Wurth, Verploegen, and Lux families. Her beloved piano was donated to Our Lady of Lourdes School for the musical education of its students. In lieu of flowers, memorials are suggested to Holy Spirit School, 2820 Central Ave., Great Falls, MT59401; Our Lady of Lourdes School, 1305 5th Ave S, Great Falls MT59401; or Central Catholic High School, 2800 18th Ave. South, Great Falls MT 59405.