Parade honors Alethia Loomis

Alethia Rannebeck Loomis grew up on a farm in Smith County and caught the "bus" (a box with three rows of bench seats mounted on a Ford chassis) to Athens High School close to Ionia. Upon graduation and normal school training, she became the teacher at Elm Creek and then Green Valley rural schools.

The story is that she pulled out the shirt tail of the cute (Clarence) Loomis boy from Ionia at a skating party. Forward a few years, that included their marriage and the end of WWII, to find the young couple living in the upstairs of Carl Loomis' house with a new baby, Sharon. (later Oral Wagner's...