Lifelong Phillips County resident, Jennie Esther Irene Capps, passed away Tuesday, June 3, 2014 in the Phillips County Retirement Center, Phillipsburg, at the age of 105 years.

She was born July 10, 1908 on a farm located between Speed and Logan, Kansas. Jennie was the fifth of six children born to Charles Oscar & Jennie May (Jupe) Clearwaters. When she was five years old her mother died from appendicitis, leaving her father alone to raise six children from the ages of four to fourteen.

Jennie attended the Olive Creek country school and later the Phillips County Number 5 country school. When the family moved to Colorado she attended high school there for a while, but returned not long afterward to care for her younger brother who had stayed behind in Phillipsburg.

On December 4, 1930 she was united in marriage to Hugh Bertman Capps in Alma, Nebraska. The couple made their home in Phillipsburg for twenty years before Hugh died of cancer in 1961. Hugh & Jennie loved traveling together, taking trips to both coasts several times, to Washington state, to Hoover Dam, and to Jennie's favorite place, the mountains of Colorado.

Jennie was a 50-year member of the VFW Auxiliary in Phillipsburg and was known statewide within the veterans' organization as the "Cookie Lady". She made it her mission for almost 50 years to bake four dozen cookies each month to send to veterans located throughout Kansas. She was also a lifelong and faithful member of the Calvary Baptist Church in Phillipsburg and was honored on her 100th birthday as the only living charter member of that church.

Jennie will be remembered as a hard-working, strongly independent woman who was full of life and appreciated each day she was given, the friends she had known and the love she had shared.

Preceding her in death were her parents; brothers, Ivan and Oscar Clearwaters; sisters, Dorothy Alsdorf, Zella Rasmussen and Thelma Barbour; a nephew, Keith Clearwaters; and her husband, Hugh.

Survivors include her niece, Kathy Robinson and husband, Jim of Centennial, CO; two step-nephews, Robert Dye and wife, Barbara of Marion, Iowa and Steven Dye of San Francisco, CA; 2 great nieces, Annie Robinson of Denver and Deborah Clearwaters and husband, Andrew McIntyre of San Francisco, CA; great nephew, Brian Clearwaters of Bethesda, Maryland; a cousin, Carolyn Nye of Hays, KS; and her cat, Goldie, also of Hays.

Following Jennie's wishes, her body was donated to the Kansas University School of Medicine. A Memorial service will be held at 2:00 p.m. Saturday, July 12, 2014 at the Calvary Baptist Church, Phillipsburg, with Pastor Mark Gervais officiating.

Memorial contributions may be made to the Calvary Baptist Church.