Lila L. Gast

Lila Lucille Gast, 94, of Plymouth, MN left this world and entered the arms of her Savior and her departed loved ones on Wednesday, May 3, 2023, after a short illness.

Lila Lucille Schacher was born October 23, 1928, to William and Pauline Schacher at the family’s farm homestead near Denhoff, ND. In 1938, at the tender age of nine, Lila lost her mother to cancer and she and her sister Pearl were thrust into adult roles in helping their father run the farm.

Her father married Emaline Triebwasser in 1939, and Lila grew to love her stepmother. Soon, a new brother and sister arrived, and Lila had more siblings to love and care for.

After graduating from Denhoff High School in 1947, Lila immediately went to work as a teacher in a remote one-room schoolhouse near Denhoff, where she taught all eight elementary grades at once for two years.

She left Denhoff in 1949 to attend Business College in Minot, North Dakota. While going to school she worked as a housekeeper/cook for a family to earn her room and board. Her employers also operated an electrical services company that employed Lila’s future husband, Don. They met on Lila’s 21st birthday. Just before graduating from Minot Business College Lila took a bookkeeping job at the Sweetheart Bakery in Minot.

Lila married Donald Gast on August 20, 1950, in Minot, ND. Don soon took a new job with Montana-Dakota Utilities in Kenmare, ND, promising Lila they would only stay in Kenmare for a year. They ended up raising their family there, living in Kenmare for 34 years prior to Don’s death in 1984. While living in Kenmare, Lila initially worked as a bookkeeper for the Kenmare Clinic. After the birth of her children in 1954 and 1957, she perfected the role of a full-time, stay-at-home mother until returning to the working world when her youngest started school. She briefly worked for Kenmare Dry Cleaners before starting a long career with the State Bank of Kenmare, and then worked in administration at Kenmare High School from 1979 to 1986.

She sold the family home in Kenmare and moved to Bismarck, ND in 1986, where she worked for Job Services of North Dakota. In 1990 she joined the bookkeeping department at her daughter’s insurance underwriting firm and moved to Plymouth, MN.

Lila reluctantly retired from the working world at age 85 in 2013. She was fiercely independent, living alone, handling her own affairs, and driving her own vehicle until just weeks before her death. She loved traveling around the U.S. with her children, and especially liked going to St. Paul for theater plays with her daughter.

Lila was preceded to heaven by her loving husband, Don; her parents; her stepmother; and her sister Pearl. She leaves an aching empty space that can’t be filled in the hearts of her daughter, Diane Gast of Plymouth, MN; son Michael Gast and daughter-in-law Lori of Omaha, NE; grandson Nicholas Gast of Los Angeles, CA; and granddaughter Shana Gast of Billings, MT; brother Willis (Sharon) Schacher of West Fargo, ND; and sister Sylvia Schadler of Bismarck, ND.  Lila also considered Mike’s two stepchildren, Mat Regele and Melissa Regele, as her own grandkids, and took great pleasure in the recent birth of Melissa’s first child, making her an official great-grandmother.

At Lila’s request, no funeral is planned. There will be a graveside service for family and close friends in Bismarck, ND at a later date.

Lila was a proud member of the Fourth Baptist Church in Plymouth, MN, where she participated in the Golden Agers program and spent many happy hours volunteering in the church office to aid in a ministry she cared about deeply. Lila’s family requests that those wishing to remember Lila through a donation to the causes she cared about visit www.fourthbaptist.org/give.