Richland, Washington — Ermine Thomas, 93, died peacefully on January 7, 2015. She lived an exemplary life, active in the Meadow Springs and Temple Meadow wards, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She served faithfully in many callings–recently as an ordinance worker in the Columbia River Temple. Ermine was born on June 7, 1922, in Brandon, Iowa, to Fredrick and Jeanetta Leonard. She attended schools in Amity and Braymer, Missouri, and high school in Ukiah, California. Ermine trained at the Children’s Hospital School of Nursing in San Francisco, and later received a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Montana State University and her pediatric nurse associate from West Virginia University. While serving in the Navy Nurses Corps, she met her husband, Russell Davis Thomas, a war patient at the Naval Hospital in Oakland. They married in 1945 and were sealed in the Washington DC Temple in 1975. Russell and Ermine served church missions in Zimbabwe and New Zealand. A pharmacist, Russell died in 1996. Ermine was also preceded in death by her parents, brother (Keith Leonard), and many close friends. She is survived by sons Dallon (Susan) and Darwin (Julie Denton), daughter Jeanne Fisher (Darrell), six grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. A viewing will be held at the Kennewick Stake Center, 895 Gage Boulevard, Richland, from 12 to 1 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 11, followed by a funeral service at 1 p.m. Interment will follow in the Samaria City Cemetery, Idaho at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, January 13.