Phyllis Ward Riggle

A memorial service for Phyllis Ward Riggle, a Minden resident for the past eight years, will be at 1 p.m. Saturday at FitzHenry's Carson Valley Funeral Home in Gardnerville.

Mrs. Riggle died Aug. 21, 2004, at Carson-Tahoe Hospital. She was born Nov. 11, 1924, in Seattle to Frederick Robert and Elizabeth Faith Jones Ward.

She graduated from Pomona College with a bachelor of science degree in the spring of 1945.

After college, she went to work at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and early in 1950 transferred to the newly created Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She was a research engineer for more than 30 years, retiring in January 1981. She worked on the Mars Viking Landers and Explorers satellites. In 1975, NASA awarded her a citation and medal for Excellence in Service for her contributions to scientific knowledge of the moon. She worked with Werner von Braun and Richard Feynman.

She was a gourmet cook, an able seamstress and an avid and creative gardener.

She married Norman Riggle in 1970 and they lived in LaCanada, Calif., and Trona, Calif. before moving to Minden.

She was preceded in death by her first husband Peter J. Buwalda, who died in 1965.

Among her survivors are her husband, Norman; sister, Patricia Ward Stockwell; nieces Linda Bandy Gonzales, Anne Stockwell Mitchell, Jane Stockwell and Linda Riggle Baldwin; nephews Michael Riggle, James Riggle and Ray Riggle and many grand-nephews and grand-nieces.

FitzHenry's Carson Valley Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.