Carla Ann Yambert

 Carla Yambert has passed away in Springfield, Missouri. She was 98 years old. Carla was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, into the family of Carl Anton Wikstrom and Esther Friend Coman Wikstrom, where she joined older sisters Ethel and Carolyn. She attended both Union High School and Calvin College (now University) in Grand Rapids, then enrolled at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she graduated with a degree in biology. It was in a systematic botany class at Michigan that Carla first met Paul Yambert, who was majoring in forestry and conservation. The first day of the botany class was crowded, so Paul offered his chair to a unknown-to-him young woman standing nearby and turned over a wastebasket as his own seat. If Carla had arrived earlier and secured a seat for herself, they might not have met!

 Paul and Carla married on September 12, 1950, in the Wikstrom home on Scott Avenue, Grand Rapids. Karl (Carl) was born in Grand Rapids the following year, followed by Nels, Laura, and Jon, who were all born in Ann Arbor. Paul taught high-school biology in Ann Arbor but in 1957 accepted a professorship at Wisconsin State College (now the University of Wisconsin) at Stevens Point, Wisconsin. Jens (“Jay”) was born in Stevens Point the next year. Paul eventually took a position at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. There, he and Carla built a passive-solar “green” home (or an “incompatible” home, in Paul’s own terminology). The house was the subject of a cover article in Mother Earth News, complete with photos of Paul and Carla at work around the house and yard.

 Carla played viola in the Steven Point symphony for a time, and she maintained a keen interest in learning throughout her life. In Stevens Point, she took non-degree college courses in mathematics and Spanish. She also studied Hebrew and Greek in order to read scriptures in their original languages. She watched television news avidly and read widely. A favorite nexus of reading topics for her was medicine, health, and nutrition. She also enjoyed true medical mysteries and fictional detective whodunits: for example, she read the complete Sue Grafton’s “alphabet series,” from A is for Alibi through Y is for Yesterday.

 Carla had a green thumb. Indoors, she tended shelves of flourishing orchids and violets with meticulous watering and care. She won many blue ribbons at local flower shows. Outdoors, she understood well the process of composting. At one home, she stirred new material regularly into a covered compost pit in the back yard and happily coexisted with a cottonmouth who took up residence in one corner of the pit. Carla named the snake Alice.

 Carla and Paul took retirement trips to Europe, the Middle East, and New Zealand. For quite some time, too, Carla made regular contributions to nature and conservation organizations. Following Paul’s retirement from teaching, he and Carla lived for a few years in Murray, Kentucky. They were commissioned as Kentucky Colonels together in 2002 for their support of conservation efforts at Land Between the Lakes, Kentucky. Paul and Carla later moved to Champaign, Illinois, near the family of Jay and his wife Shelly, and then to Castlewood Senior Living in Nixa, Missouri, near Laura, her husband Vern Reeder, and their family.

Paul had passed away at age 95 in 2023, and Carla was predeceased also by Nels and Jay, and by grandson Carl Reeder. She is survived by Karl (Helen), Laura, and Jon (Connie), seventeen grandchildren, and numerous great-grandchildren. We are blessed beyond words to have had her intimately in our lives for so long.

 A graveside service will be held at 10:00 a.m. at Vaughn - Oddfellow Cemetery, Ozark, on Monday, July 6, 2026, under direction of Adams Funeral Home, Nixa.