Anna Roberts, 107, died Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2013 at Prairie  View Care Center, Woonsocket.
Funeral services were Monday, Dec. 16 at 11 a.m. in Forestburg Lutheran Church, Forestburg. Visitation was Sunday, Dec. 15 from 5-7 p.m. with a prayer service at 6 p.m. Burial will be in Butler Cemetery, Letcher, at a later date.
Anna Belle Zoss Roberts was born Sept. 29, 1906 near Barnsville, Minn. to Adolf and Amelia (Alt) Zoss. The family came on an immigration train to Letcher in 1907.
She attended the Forbes School and then the Heald School and graduated from Forestburg High School in 1923. She attended Northern State College in the summer of 1923 and then began teaching that same year at the Mauer School north of Forestburg. She taught three years at a country school south of Woonsocket and three years at the school in Forestburg.
She attended the Univesity of Wisconsin and got her bachelors of science degree in 1933. She then taught school in Roundup and Great Falls, Mont. until the start of World War II, when she went to Seattle, Wash., to work at Boeing Aircraft Co. building airplanes for two years.
Anna then went to Honolulu, Hawaii, to teach in a private school. While there she was hired by the defense department to teach Air Force personnel so they could receive their high school diplomas. Anna then went to Japan with the Army of Occupation to continue her teaching career. When the war with Korea broke out she was sent there to teach airmen.
After the Korean War, Anna came back to Los Angeles, Calif., went back to school and studied computers. She got a job with the TRW Corporation, where she worked with Werner Von Braun building rocket engines, which were later used to put rockets into space.
Anna was united in marriage to Allen “Bob” Roberts in Las Vegas, Nev., and they made their home in Yucaipa, Calif. The marriage brought three stepchildren into the family, Jack, Mary and Bill. Bob passed away in 1981 and Anna continued to live in Yucaipa until the spring of 2011, when she moved back to South Dakota.
She was preceded in death by her parents; sisters, Nellie Volzke, Mary Zoss, Elsie Zoss, Mildred Easthouse, Nadine Zoss and Laureen Zoss; and brothers, Albert, Jacob, Adolf, Ben, Charles, Fred and John.