SHERIDAN -- A celebration of life for Margery "Margie" Dregoiw, 86, will be held at 11 a.m. Friday, April 7, 2006, at Champion Ferries Funeral Home with Dr. Hugh Batty officiating.

She died April 3, 2006, in Sheridan.

She was born Jan. 28, 1920, in Pocatello, Idaho. She was raised in Sheridan and graduated from Sheridan High School in 1938.

She married John J. Dregoiw in 1940. They were high school sweethearts and "after chasing her around for two years," they married.

She stayed at home to raise three children but she and her husband danced every Saturday night at the Elks lodge.

By the early 1960s, her parents had been killed in an auto accident, her youngest child had left home and she had to do something "to keep from going crazy." She was neither a joiner nor a bridge player, so she began her "art odyssey."

Over a period of about three years, she repeatedly took watercolor workshops, but each one had a different instructor with a different method of teaching.

She enrolled at Sheridan College to study oil painting but soon broadened her horizons to many other forms of art. Her favorites were oil and watercolor.

She decorated her home with her own art and in 2002, had a one-woman art show.

Until recently, she continued to dance, jump on a trampoline, stand on her hands and walk daily.

Survivors include her husband, three children, Linda Johnson of LaGrange, Judy G. and Mickey of Sheridan; four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

Memorials may be made to Sheridan Elks Lodge No. 520, 45 W. Brundage St., Sheridan, 82801.