LeAnn Kurtz Gill Obituary

LeAnn Rae Kurtz Gill, passed away on July 16, 2025 surrounded by her husband, family and close friends after a brief and unexpected illness. A Celebration of Life will be held on Wednesday, July 30, 2025 at Sunnybrook Community Church, 5601 Sunnybrook Drive, Sioux City, Iowa, with Family Visitation at 4:00 p.m. and a Celebration of Life Service at 5:30 p.m. presided over by Congregational Life Pastor, B.J. Van Kalsbeek, followed by a fellowship meal at the Church. Private interment with family will be held at a later date at St. John's Cemetery in Jackson, Nebraska. To view the service online, please visit www.sunnybrookchurch.org

The sometimes chaotic and difficult earlier segments of Lee’s life, followed by the ultimately courageous, miraculous and inspirational trajectory of her life, are most easily summarized by a small memo that she retained in plain view on the monitor of her computer in her home office where she often worked. This memo said: “I’M NO LONGER A SLAVE TO FEAR … I AM A CHILD OF GOD”. Lee’s faith life was the anchor that she often returned to when faced with troublesome circumstances in her life.

Lee was born in Duluth, Minnesota on September 13, 1959, joining her older brother, Miles Schumacher, as the children of her parents, Kenneth Ray Schumacher and Katheen Elaine (Knaus) Schumacher. The family subsequently lived in Detroit, Michigan and Sioux City, Iowa. Lee graduated from Sioux City East High School and Western Iowa Tech Community College with an associate degree in Business Administration.

Lee married Kurt Stalcup shortly thereafter and to that marriage was born her daughter, Sylest Kae Stalcup.

Subsequently Lee was married to Gale Kurtz, with Lee’s daughters, Kari Gail (Kurtz) Jensen and Breann Roslin Kurtz, born to this relationship. Lee was also blessed to then gain stepdaughters Tracy (Kurtz) Hitchcock and Kelly (Kurtz) Gugat.

On January 11, 2014, Lee was united in marriage to David Lee Gill in the presence of family and many friends at the Sunnybrook Community Church in Sioux City, Iowa.

Lee’s professional career in sales and marketing was successfully propelled by her talent for creating enduring customer relationships based on listening carefully to the goals desired by her clients and then fashioning strategies to accomplish the client’s goals. As a result of these capacities and characteristics Lee received many accolades over the years of her professional career for acknowledged success in media sales for Waitt Radio and other entities in the Sioux City area, and as General Manager of Sales for more than ten years at WNAX radio in Yankton, South Dakota.

After her career in media sales, Lee became the Director of Development at Rosecrance Jackson Centers in Sioux City for five years before health issues led to her retirement from professional careers in 2023. In this role Lee spearheaded fundraising initiatives for contributing to the success of the mission of the Rosecrance Health Network in the Iowa region to provide superior mental health and addiction treatment services to those persons in need of such essential and lifesaving services.

In addition to the fulfillment of Lee’s life mission to lovingly support her fellow human travelers through her professional work at Rosecrance, Lee was an immensely consequential advocate and resource for the considerably large community of persons in the Siouxland area seeking recovery from the consequences of destructive addiction and mental health issues. As an example, in 2011 Lee was presented the Flo Warnstadt award at the Annual Banquet presented by Jackson Recovery Centers for outstanding support to women in recovery.

Many years back Lee played a leadership role in establishing the Oxford Houses in Sioux City, providing supportive sober living environments in three men’s and one women’s sobriety residences in Sioux City. Lee with several of her close friends, continued through recent years to alternate weekly sponsoring and mentoring meetings with the women who came to the women’s Oxford home to seek a safe, sober living environment, often after being released from prison and/or treatment facilities with no safe place to go in order to seek sobriety. Countless numbers of women have commenced lives of enduring sobriety as a result of the efforts of Lee and her Oxford colleagues over these many years.

For the past 25 years Lee continuously served on multiple panels of volunteers in Sioux City’s Drug Court program, which provided monthly reviews of the programs of addiction recovery prescribed for people on probation or parole within the Iowa justice system.

Over the last 27 years of Lee’s own sobriety, Lee has sponsored numerous women who asked her to support them with Lee’s hard-earned wisdom. This was a labor of love for Lee as she came to this work with a special empathy based on her personal knowledge and struggles with addiction earlier in her life. She offered hope and a real-life demonstration of success in overcoming addiction.

Lee played an original role over 12 years ago in the implementation of the Celebrate Recovery Program now presented weekly at Sunnybrook Community Church in Sioux City. Celebrate Recovery is a faith-based approach to the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step programs, and Lee served in leadership every week for these weekly meetings providing a fellowship meal, worship services, and faith-based recovery support for hundreds of persons over the years who have suffered from hurts, habits, and hangups that negatively affected the lives of these attendees.

Lee was also a Certified Facilitator in the Woman Within International organization, traveling in the United States and across the world to participate in leadership teams presenting weekend workshops and retreats offered by this organization seeking to empower women in their quests for personal growth and development.

More recently Lee applied her unique talents in a collaboration with her husband, Dave, Jan Poulson, Flora Lee, and Mark and Terri Avery in a three-year initiative to maneuver through financial and political intricacies to create and place the Celebrating Community public art sculpture park located next to the Martin Luther King Transportation Center in downtown Sioux City. That sculpture park contains fourteen bronze sculptural likenesses of eight women and six men to honor these unsung “sheroes” and heroes who have selflessly worked in lifelong missions to better the circumstances and opportunities of marginalized subsets of residents of the Siouxland area.

Lee loved to bowl back in the day. One time, she dropped a ball on her foot, breaking it. Lee also loved men’s fast pitch softball games involving the world champion Penn Corp teams in the 80s and 90s. Lee loved movies, the tv show “Friends”, and shopping trips to Omaha. Lee and Dave loved to attend Broadway shows in Omaha and New York. Lee loved Christian music and attended many Christian music concerts with Dave – Hillsong United, Mercy Me, Casting Crowns and Chris Tomlin. Lee also traveled annually with a group of close friends to the RiseFest music festival presented in Sheldon, Iowa each year.

Lee and Dave enjoyed traveling and vacations: a honeymoon and a 4th wedding anniversary trip to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico; three cruises to Canada and Alaska: trips with WNAX to Phoenix and to New York during the Christmas season; and adventurous trips to Charleston, South Carolina; Sedona, Arizona; Hawaii; and to the Grand Cayman Islands, all with very dear friends.

Lee had a love for the artistic expression of dance .... watching her granddaughters Haylee, Jasmyn and Raeleigh through countless recitals, competitions, performances, Nutcracker ballets and awards. Lee was the definition of "dance grandma". She loved also watching her grandsons Treyton, Keyan, Nathan and Archie, and her granddaughters Hope, Addie and Wesley, in their team athletic activities. Lee immensely enjoyed her frequent phone calls with Breann, Kari, Sylest and many close friends, talking about everything and nothing at the same time.

Lee excelled in every way as a wife, mother, grandmother, friend, sister, aunt, sponsor, mentor and in every other role she took on. Lee loved fiercely and her love was unconditional and never went unnoticed. She loved her husband, Dave, her kids, her grandkids, her close friends, and her animals more than words can say.

All of the above descriptions of this beautiful, marvelous, wonderful, charismatic woman have come about because Lee, even in the face of continuous health difficulties for many parts of her life, cultivated a relationship with, and was always strengthened by her love for her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Those left to cherish her memory are her beloved husband, David Lee Gill; daughters, Sylest Kae Stalcup (Javen Mobley), Kari Gail (Kurtz) Jensen; and Breann Roslin (“Bre”) Kurtz (Daron Triplett); her twelve grandchildren, Hope Gee, Treyton Dunbar, Jasmyn Dunbar, Haylee Jensen, Nathan Jensen, Alex Jensen, Keyan Kurtz, Raeleigh Triplett, KyRon Triplett, Addison Gill, Wesley Gill and Archer Ott; her former spouse, Gale Kurtz; her five stepchildren, Tracy Hitchcock (Dan), Kelly Gugat (Brian), Benjamin Gill (Cydney), Tessa Gill, and Alyssa (Gill) Ott; and her brother, Miles Schumucher (Julie); and scores of folks fortunate enough to call her … “my friend, Lee”. And last, but not least, by her beloved dogs, Cooper and Dexter, and beloved cats, Rocky and Coco, all who miss her dearly.

She was preceded in death by her parents Kenneth and Kathleen Schumacher, stepmother Barbara Tomlinson, a grandson, Caleb Stalcup and a granddaughter, Nevaeh Kurtz. Also meeting Lee at the end of the Rainbow Bridge as they waited for her following their passings were her past canine companions: Patience, Kujo, Mocha, and Chance, and her kitty, Cassie.

In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to the Rosecrance Jackson Centers Foundation in Sioux City, Iowa to help fulfill their mission of help, hope and lasting recovery. Any donations can be facilitated by going to the following link for this foundation: www.rosecrance.org/foundation-donor