Shirley Louise Grimm, 79, of Stanwood, died Sunday November 25, 2012 at Cedar Manor Nursing Home in Tipton. Funeral Services will be Wednesday November 28, 2012 at 10:30 A.M. at Stanwood Union Church with Pastor Phil Leipold and Pastor Christine Wagner-Hecht officiating. Burial will be at the Stanwood Cemetery. Visitation will be Tuesday November 27, 2012 from 4-7 P.M. at Chapman Funeral Home in Clarence.\nShirley was born on October 1, 1933 to Harry and Alice (Weber) Wagner in Burlington, Iowa. She was a trailblazer of women's athletics, playing semi-pro softball for the Burlington Merchants softball team when Burlington High School offered no women's sports programs, and going on to play for the Chicago-based Rockola Chicks of the National Girls Baseball League. Graduating Burlington High School in 1951, she attended Carthage College, where she was also a standout athlete. She supplemented her education with studies at the University of Washington and in Sweden and Mexico City and in 1952 attended the Summer Olympics in Helsinki, Finland, beginning a lifelong love of travel, fascination with other cultures and appreciation of reading. After graduating college, she taught physical education in Beloit, WI, then back home in Burlington, where she met her eventual husband Louis Grimm, whom she married on Nov. 24, 1961. \nThey moved to Stanwood in 1966, where their familiar home at the corner of Ash and North Streets would become ever more intricately adorned each year by the flora sown by her annually restless green thumb. Shirley remained an irrepressible athlete most of her life: an avid golfer; a lifelong lover of natural wonders, camping and outdoor recreation; one of the first adopters of walking as a daily fitness regimen; a referee of area Division III college basketball and volleyball; and a longtime official of Iowa high school volleyball. She began her career as high school volleyball official in 1972 and just three years later was chosen to officiate her first state tournament. She went on to officiate over 1,000 volleyball matches in Iowa through a 20 year career, always conspicuous for carrying a box to each match on which she had to stand to see over the net. She stood taller figuratively, selected to work another 14 state tourneys, conducting official rules meetings across the state and, as an Iowa liaison to National Federation Rules Meetings, suggested new volleyball rules for implementation, some still in place in the game today. \nShe went on to be inducted into the Burlington Athletics Hall of Fame and, in 2006, into the Iowa High School Girls Volleyball Hall of Fame. She attended two more Olympiads, the 1968 Mexico City and the 1976 Montreal games; cycled through France twice; was, along with Lou, a season ticket holder for Iowa Hawkeye basketball and football throughout their years together, and additionally journeyed over the course of her life to Western Europe, Central America, the Caribbean, most of the continental U.S. and Hawaii. \nIn addition to their own three children, Shirley and Lou hosted four foreign exchange students, and she extended her commitment to juvenile development as a founder of the Peter Pan Preschool of Mechanicsville and Stanwood and as a Girl Scout troop leader and, for many years, a director of the Mississippi Valley Girl Scout Council. Through her years in Stanwood, she was also active with the Stanwood Library Board, the Laetitians' Club and the Stanwood Union Church, where she was an omnipresent voice in the church choir, and she returned to education later in her career as a library associate with Lincoln Community Schools. \nSurvivors include a son, Matthew L. Grimm, of Madison, Wisconsin; daughters, Lori L. "Goose" (Dan) Pekarek of Tampa, Florida, and Dr. Suzanne B. (fiancee Dale Kuklinski) Grimm of Madison, Wisconsin; and a brother, Wayne Wagner of Ft. Collins, Colorado.\nShe was preceded in death by her parents; a brother, Gary; and her husband, Louis.