Obit: Rasmussen, Barbara #2 (1941 - 1963)

Contact: stan@wiclarkcountyhistory.org

Surnames: Rasmussen, Peissig

----Source: OWEN ENTERPRISE (Owen, Clark County, Wis.) 12/05/1963

Rasmussen, Barbara #2 (1 FEB 1941 - 3 DEC 1963)

Final rites for Mrs. Roy Rasmussen, rural Greenwood (Clark Co., Wis.), will be held at 10:30 Friday morning at St. Mary’s Catholic Church at Greenwood.  Burial will be made in the parish cemetery.

Friends and relatives may call at the Hill Funeral Home at Greenwood where a  rosary will be said at 9:00 o’clock Thursday, Dec. 5^th.

Mrs. Rasmussen, nee Barbara Peissig, daughter of Mrs. Martha Peissig, Owen, and the late William Peissig, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at her home late Tuesday afternoon.

Members of the family told authorities she had been despondent because of health reasons for the past year and had been under medical care.

The tragic incident was first known when James Petkovsek, an employee of the Rasmussen cheese factory, owned by the husband’s father, drove into the farm yard delivering a load of whey.  As he pulled into the yard Rasmussen’s three-year-old daughter, Cherrie Lynn, came running from the house saying, "Mommy shot."  At first the startled man discredited the remark only to have it merit investigation when he noticed blood on the youngster.  Entering the house he found the body with a 300 Savage rifle lying nearby.

Authorities said Mrs. Rasmussen, alone at home with the two children, Cherrie and two-year-old Dawn Renee had sent them upstairs to play prior to the act.  Hearing the shot the children came back downstairs.

Mrs. Rasmussen’s health had been failing the past few days and at the time of her despondent act her husband was at a doctor’s office completing arrangements for her hospitalization the following day for treatment.

She was a 1959 graduate of Owen-Withee High School and that fall entered a beauty culture college at Eau Claire and did that type of work until her marriage.  In addition to her husband and two children she leaves her mother, Mrs. Martha Peissig, Owen; two brothers, Duane and Dale, and a sister, Diane Peissig, all of Owen.