Shirley
Carpenter
Shirley Ann Carpenter (née Jorgensen), 93, passed peacefully after a long battle with Alzheimer's Disease on Monday, January 9, 2023, at her nursing home in Round Rock, TX. She was very loved by her family and all that met her and will be missed terribly.
One of seven children, Shirley was born April 28, 1929, in Franklin Park, IL to Alex and Evelyn (Nelson) Jorgensen. She grew up in Melrose Park, IL. While in her mid-teens, her mother passed and Shirley quit school to care for her father and brothers. A few years later, a young man named Raymond "Jack" Carpenter, who was friends with her brother Donald, came by the house to help work on her brother's car; he spotted her hanging out outside with her cousin and was instantly smitten. They were married in May 1949 and spent the next 62 years together, until Jack's passing in April 2011.
In the late 1970s, a neighbor asked if Shirley would babysit her infant daughter while she went back to work. Four years later, a second baby girl joined her sister in Shirley's care. Over the next decade-plus of babysitting, that neighbor, Barb (Tom) Gacic, and those two girls, Colleen (Tom) Simpson and Kelli Gacic, came to be like family.
Shirley and Jack enjoyed camping with their trailer for many years and joined a camping club in their retirement where they made several good friends and visited many exciting places across the US.
Shirley was preceded in death by her parents, Alex and Evelyn; her loving husband Jack; sister Alleen "Tootie" Finnegan; brothers Donald, Wallace, Roger Wayne (infant), and Franklin Delano (infant); and several in-laws.
Shirley is survived by her daughter, Lynn (Kris Foster) of Austin, TX; brother Richard of Plainfield, IL; granddaughter Skyler Marie of Decatur, IL; and numerous nieces and nephews.