Muriel (“Bobbie”) Simpson

Bobbie Simpson was born on her parents’ farm near the Mississippi River town of McGregor, Iowa on the 4th of July, 1929, the first of five children born to Robert and Esther (Peterson) Klotzbach.

Christened Muriel Luverne, she was known from infancy as “Bobbie” for the resemblance she bore to her father. Bobbie was the oldest of five children. The family’s first home did not have indoor plumbing or electricity until the rural electrification program of the mid-1930s.

Bobbie attended a one-room schoolhouse through eighth grade, then attended the local high school, where she graduated in the spring of 1946. At 17 she had the opportunity to visit a cousin in Tacoma, Washington. Several years later Bobbie was introduced by friends in Tacoma to Bill Simpson, who would soon become a math teacher at Goodman Middle School in Gig Harbor.

Bobbie and Bill were married in 1953; daughter Sara Elizabeth was born in 1955, and son Ralph David two years later. Between 1958 and 1961 the family relocated to Giesen, Germany, where Bill taught at an American military base. On returning to the U.S., the family settled in their home on Ray Nash Drive outside of Gig Harbor, where Bobbie would live for the next 53 years.

In the mid-sixties Bobbie took the first of several positions with the Peninsula School District at Artondale Elementary School. She would later work at Purdy Elementary, and then served for several years as an assistant to the superintendent of the school district.

The family’s life was upended when Bill died suddenly in 1971. Bobbie held the family together through this difficult time, working full time while providing the emotional support and guidance as a single parent to get two teenagers through their high-school years, and then the financial means to see Sara and David through college.

Throughout her time in Gig Harbor Bobbie was active in the community, assisting many friends and neighbors in times of need and serving in many roles in Peninsula Lutheran Church in Gig Harbor.

After her retirement from the school district in the early 1990s, Bobbie stayed active in the church and community and enjoyed opportunities to see new parts of the world and revisit personal and ancestral roots with family and friends. As Sara and David started their own families Bobbie was a loving and doting grandmother to five grandchildren and later seven great-grandchildren.

In 2014 Bobbie move out of the house on Ray Nash Drive and joined Sara and her family in Richland, Washington. She died on May 5, 2024 at the Guardian Angel Care Facility in Richland.

Bobbie is survived by daughter Sara and her husband, Tim Flaten, of Richland, Washington, and son David and his wife Swarupa, of Vienna, Virginia; Sara’s children Joanna, David, and Erik and David’s children William and Neel; and sister-in-law Cynthia Klotzbach of Egan, Minnesota. Bobbie’s four siblings Lois, James, Dorothy, and William all predeceased her.

A memorial service for Bobbie will be held at Peninsula Lutheran Church in Gig Habor at 11 a.m. on Saturday, June 15. All are welcome.