Penelope Reedy

Penelope Michal Croner Reedy passed away unexpectedly February 4, 2022. “February is the cruelest month.” Penelope Reedy uttered these words every year. Once the glitter of the holidays was over, she said, “minds begin wandering the irrational chambers of discontent.” She was born June 5, 1947, in Everett, Washington, to Patricia Ann Elzea and Ralph Warner Croner. She was the eldest of five children and graduated from Lake Stevens High School in 1965.

At 18, she moved to New York to attend a fashion merchandizing school and worked for a Lutheran Church. Meanwhile her family moved to Fairfield, Idaho, on the Camas Prairie where her father was born. On a visit home to her family one year she met Jim Reedy, a local farmer and rancher. She married Jim in 1971 on the opening day of hunting season, and they raised four children on a farm outside Fairfield. She developed a love of photography, set up a darkroom in the house, and was known for her photos of the prairie, Solider Mountain, and camas lilies. She grew a huge garden and, with Jim, raised cattle, chickens, ducks, and rabbits for the dinner table. She described her “itchy ax hand” every fall, ready to butcher. She produced much of their food, from homemade sauerkraut to bottling their own root beer. She always said, “one thing about chickens, you can always eat them.” They divorced in 1988.

Penelope was a writer and poet. With a group of friends on the Camas Prairie, she started a writer’s group and wrote poetry and short fiction on a manual typewriter. They collectively self-published periodicals under various titles like The Fairfield Tractor Company and Guns & Grammar. For 20 years, she edited and published The Redneck Review of Literature, a western literary magazine of poetry, short stories, art, and book reviews. She wrote every day. In the past several years, she wrote mostly handwritten letters to a vast network of friends and family.

A family friend made her a floor loom in the early 1980s and she began weaving shawls, tea towels, baby blankets, shrouds, among many items. She handspun yarn on an old spinning wheel and dyed it with natural materials from the prairie and garden. Her house was full of yarn, literally to the ceiling, and many ongoing projects.

In the early 1990s she attended CSI in Twin Falls where, on her own printing press, she printed an underground student newspaper that upset administration. She married Jay Sloan and moved to Milwaukee to attend Marquette University. She graduated with a B.A. in English in 1993. They later divorced and Penelope moved back to Idaho. She chose to return to Pocatello where she had many close friends. She dispatched for the Idaho State Police for a few years before entering the graduate program in English at ISU. Her Master’s thesis was an autoethnography of her life on the farm, her marriage, and the incompatibility of forging a literary career in rural Idaho.

Following her graduate degree, she worked for the Times-News Burley bureau for a year and then the Idaho State Journal for several years, where she edited the food page and covered education and courts, among many assignments. She wrote a column called “My Private Pocatello” about the community, food, rural life, her extensive family, and being a westerner. She became an adjunct instructor in the English Department at ISU and retired from there.

Penelope was also a pianist. She taught piano lessons while living on the farm, entertained family and friends at every gathering, and spent a stretch playing in piano bars in Pocatello and elsewhere.

She is survived by her children Patricia Wilkinson (Cory), Buhl, Idaho; Katherine Reedy and Edward Reedy (Heather), Pocatello; and James Reedy (Michelle), Fairfield, Idaho; grandchildren Avery, Quin, Alex, Gus, Eloise, Jack, Eónan, and another grandson on the way; brothers Matt Croner (Janet), Fairfield, Idaho, and Brian Croner (Lynette), Twin Falls, Idaho; and numerous beloved nieces and nephews. She is preceded in death by her parents and sisters Shelly Croner and Suzanne Jusst.

Funeral services will be held on Saturday, February 26, 2022 at 1 pm at Colonial Chapel, 2005 S. 4^th Ave. Pocatello, ID, with a viewing for one hour prior to the services.

Interment will follow at Mountain View Cemetery, 1520 S. 5^th Ave. Pocatello, ID.

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