Obituary
In the care of Solemn OaksWilma Stroo, 77, of Fremont, died Wednesday, September 30, 2026, at home, on the last day of the month, which she would point out was a shift she always worked.
She was born Wilma Jean Bouwman on November 19, 1948, in Fremont, one of nine, in a house she described without any bitterness as full. She started at the canning plant at nineteen, on second shift, and stayed thirty-four years, most of them on the line and the last nine as a floor lead — the first woman in her department to hold it, a fact she considered less interesting than the fact that her line did not run short.
She married Gerrit Stroo in 1970. They were married fifty-two years and argued companionably about money, politics, and the correct way to load a dishwasher, none of which was ever settled. They raised two daughters in the house on Sheridan and put both of them through school on two factory wages and a garden.
She was steward for her local for eleven years and took it seriously; she sat with people through disciplinary meetings, wrote grievances by hand at her kitchen table, and got a woman's job back in 1994 in a case people still bring up. She did not think of it as brave. She thought of it as the job.
In retirement she bowled Tuesdays, watched every Lions game with an expression of settled disappointment, and kept the kind of yard that makes neighbors nervous. Services are Sunday.
She is survived by her daughters, Tammy (Rick) Nyhof of Fremont and Lisa Stroo of Grand Rapids; five grandchildren; two great-grandchildren; and her sisters, Joyce Bouwman Terpstra of Fremont, Marlene Bouwman of Newaygo, and Arlene DeYoung of Holland.
She was preceded in death by her husband of fifty-two years, Gerrit; her parents; and five of her siblings.