Alma L. Shank

Former Lancaster County resident Alma Longenecker Shank, age 92, died January 24, 2022, at an assisted care facility in Laurel, Maryland. She is survived by her husband of 72 years, Benjamin Greenly Shank, and her two daughters Vicki Shank along with her husband Barry Harlan, and Terri Reed, as well as a grandson William Michael Kemp Jr. along with his wife Amanda and their toddler son William Mason Kemp.

At the family’s request, no service will be held. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to your favorite charity. Burial will be at Bossler’s Mennonite Church in Elizabethtown.

Mrs. Shank was born on a Mennonite family farm September 9, 1929, in rural Elizabethtown, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, attended a one-room schoolhouse on Ridge Road east of Elizabethtown, and graduated 1946 at Elizabethtown Area High School. She was the middle child of three children born to Victor B. Longenecker and Mary Strickler Longenecker. Her fondest memories of her childhood were her 4-H projects, raising sheep each year and attending the annual State Farm Show in Harrisburg with her father, winning prizes each year.

When Alma became a teenager, she loved to sew her own clothes and unlike typical Mennonite girls at the time, was influenced by secular fashions for young girls. So her Mennonite mother took Alma and her brother Marlin to a secular church, the First Church of God in Elizabethtown where she was baptized when she was 15 years old. Three years later, after graduating high school and working at the A.S. Kreider Shoe Manufacturing Company in Elizabethtown, she met her future husband Ben who was also raised in a rural Mennonite family at a square dance in Rheems. One year later they married at the First Church of God in Elizabethtown.

After marrying, Alma helped Ben on their small poultry farm. In quick succession after marrying, she gave birth to two daughters, first Vicki then Terri 15 months later. When family farm-subsistence worsened as large commercial farms commoditized agriculture, Ben found a job with the Pennsylvania Department of Labor as a liaison to farmers in Lancaster County while Alma, Vicki and Terri kept the egg-business going for another decade. Alma eventually found a part-time job working for the Federal Department of Agriculture as a meat inspector, both poultry and red-meat, at various slaughter houses in Lancaster County. As Ben and Alma eyed retirement, they tore down two chicken houses, remodeled one chicken house into a one-bedroom granny flat where they lived for another decade while renting out the large farmhouse. They moved to a senior community in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania and lived there for over 20 years, gaining a reputation as badminton players who showed no mercy to their opponents.