Mae Moravec, 97, Sturgis, died at the Sturgis Regional Senior Care Center Tuesday, April 4, 2006.

Funeral Services will be 11 a.m. Thursday, April 13, at the First Presbyterian Church with Rev. Harold Delbridge officiating. Burial will be at the Bear Butte Cemetery.

Visitation will be 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday, April 12, at the Kinkade Funeral Chapel in Sturgis.

A memorial has been established to the First Presbyterian Church of Sturgis of which Mae's grandmother was a founding member.

Mae was born Nov. 24, 1908, to Ralph and Lillian (O'Neill) Quinn on her family's homestead ranch near the town her grandmother, Agnes McMillian Quinn, founded, Tama.

As a young girl, she grew up on the ranch and attended country school. She was very active in sports and involved in most of the local activities. Later due to her mother and sister dying early on, she took up raising her two younger brothers and helping her father on the ranch. She then went on to college in Spearfish to earn her teaching certificate. She taught in a one-room school house at Marcus School and then on to the Tama School (1929 - 1930).

She met her future husband, John Moravec, when he worked as a ranch hand for her father. They later fell in love and married April 6, 1929, in Sturgis. They resided on a ranch of their own near Tama and began a family, starting with oldest son, Jack Moravec, born in 1931, followed by son Jule Moravec in 1933. The family then moved to Sturgis in 1937. Then moved on to Rapid City in 1939.

She operated the cafe at the sale barns in both Belle Fourche and Rapid City where she also kept books for the sale barn in Rapid City.

In 1958, she fulfilled a dream by founding the Rapid City Beauty and Barber Supply, which she owned and operated until the mid 1970s.

Mae and John moved to Piedmont in 1969. She then began working with her eldest son, auctioneer Jack with Tri-State Auction Service, clerking sales and keeping their books until 1998 at the age of 90. In the summer of 1999, she moved back to Sturgis from Piedmont.

Survivors include one son and his wife, Jule and Lanet Moravec of Prescott, Ariz.; one daughter-in-law, Dannie Moravec of Rapid City; six grandchildren, Garet Moravec and his wife Cynthia Zurmuhlen of Bellevue, Neb., Amber Moravec-Whitlock and her husband Rob of Vista, Calif., Melody Moravec of Prescott, Brett Moravec of Piedmont, Mike Moravec and his wife Nikki and Jacque Malaki and her husband Mali of Willis, Texas; and six great-grandchildren, Heather Moravec-Whitlock, Morgan Moravec, Tyler and Bailey Moravec, and Iosua and Tomasi Malaki.

She was preceded in death by her parents; her husband, John; one son, Jack; one sister, Florence Quinn; and two brothers, Neil and Wesley Quinn.