“…that cute cheerleader from Junction,” who died at 99, was an MVP citizen of Greene County.

By CHUCK OFFENBURGER

JEFFERSON, Iowa, Sept. 19, 2026 — We in Greene County lost one of our favorites recently with the death of 99-year-old Marilynn Hoskinson. Her funeral on Wednesday, Sept. 16, at First Presbyterian Church here was actually a feel-good event. There were a few tears, of course, but many more laughs.

“It’s almost impossible to represent 99 years of life, especially the full way Marilynn lived it, in an 8- or 9-minute eulogy,” Pastor Bill Kem said in starting.

He came close.

But he did miss the one vignette that’s meant the most to me in the 22 years that I knew Marilynn Hoskinson, mainly as active members of the Greene County Historical Society. I must tell it, just so colorful history is properly preserved.

Marilynn Hoskinson, in 2018. (Photos are by the author, unless detailed otherwise.)

In 2004 or maybe ’05, soon after I’d moved into the Cooper community, I happened to mention to another older friend, Gerald Lawton, that I’d met Marilynn at a historical society program and she seemed to be a fun character.

“She sure is!” Lawton said, going on to explain that he was attending old Cooper High School at the same time Marilynn Parker was attending old Grand Junction High School, in the early 1940s. “Ever since, I’ve always thought of her as ‘that cute cheerleader from Junction’!”

Of course, the next time I ran into Marilynn in Jefferson, where she spent most of her adult life, I mentioned learning that she was a former cheerleader.

“Well, yeah!” she said flatly.

Do you still, I asked, have a cheer? She rolled her eyes at me in a look of disgust.

Marilynn was nearly 80 then, but she went right into a bouncy routine, and chanted this classic:

Ta-hick, ta-minnie,
Ta-zolly-zock,
Ta-boom, ta-larrie —
Yoo-hoo!

“And when we did that cheer, we’d turn around and wave at the opponents when we yelled ‘Yoo-hoo!’ in a falsetto voice,” she said. “They didn’t like us much.”

I must’ve asked her a dozen times after that to share that cheer with other friends, and she did it as recently as in her 98th year.

“Marilynn always had opinions,” the pastor told us in his eulogy.

At the annual business meeting of the historical society in December of 2018, we saluted Marilynn Hoskinson’s 25 years or more of service to the organization. I interviewed her then for a story I wrote about her for the group’s newsletter.

In that story I wrote that, even at age 91, she was still a dynamo. “She always has been,” I continued. “Student, cheerleader, wife, mother, grandmother, a 30-year banker with Home State Bank, singer, piano & organ player, crossword puzzle addict, 4-time cancer survivor and outstanding volunteer leader for First Presbyterian Church, the Jefferson B.P.O. DOES, the historical society and other groups.”

Marilynn added an explanation of how she maintained that pace.

“I have two words that are my key words for life,” she said “They are ‘Keep moving!’ You have to do that. You can’t just sit in a chair and piss & moan. I say this all the time: ‘Thank you, God, for all the things I can do, and I’ll keep doing them until I can’t.’ ”

Her obituary reported that she also had a personal motto: “Mind over matter — just get it done!”

For years, Marilynn Hoskinson (right) portrayed a teacher in a one-room country school in the historic school maintained at the Greene County Fairgrounds. In 2017, she turned over that duty as the school’s docent to Becky Cunningham, shown here with Marilynn.

She was known among us for the way she often got our historical meetings started, by shutting down the chitchat with a loud, shrill whistle, and then waving for the president to proceed.

She was also known for the many different historical programs she presented. Those included lessons and stories about women’s hats, about Spring Lake Park, about the history of Grand Junction, and also about the 70+ one-room country schools that once served the children of rural Greene County. She attended one herself, from 1931 to ’35, before her family moved into “Junction.”

She was only 16 years old and the valedictorian when she graduated from Grand Junction High School in 1944. She married Leon Hoskinson on Christmas Eve in 1945, they started farming and raising daughters Becky, Kathy and Tracy.

Marilynn also worked briefly as a medical assistant, then began her career with Jefferson’s Home State Bank. She became widely-known as the chatty, personable and fun teller for a drive-up bank Home State opened a few blocks from its main facility uptown.

A long-ago incident at the drive-up bank gave us one of the best moments at Marilynn’s funeral. The photo boards that her daughters and grandchildren put together showed us this advertisement that Home State Bank ran in the local newspapers:

At the funeral, the family also displayed the clearer photograph that was featured in that ad:

Oh, we’ll miss her. But we’ll never forget her!

Pastor Kem referred a couple times in his eulogy that “Marilynn always had opinions,” and that she could occasionally even be “a little bossy.” Consider her opinion about Hy-Vee Food Stores deciding to open a store in Jefferson in 2015.

“She didn’t think the town needed it, and made that clear to a lot of people,” the pastor said. “But then Marilynn had a change of heart. She discovered that Hy-Vee makes a really good chocolate chip cookie. So then she thought the store was all right, and she became a regular customer.”

He then ended his message from the pulpit with an advisory.

“After today’s service, you’re all invited to a luncheon in Fellowship Hall,” he said. “And when you get to the end of the serving tables, you’ll notice that there are enough Hy-Vee chocolate chip cookies there that everyone can have one and enjoy it.”

We did.