Zona Markiewicz

Zona Ann Markiewicz (Smith) passed away on October 14th, 2025 at Benedictine Living Center in St. Peter, Minnesota.  She was 92 years old. Her daughter, Kirsten and partner, Marla Feikema, were with her. Memorial service will be held at 11am Saturday November 8, 2025 at Woodland Hill Funeral Home. 

She was born in 1933 to George Wallace Smith and Edna Lily (Amundsen) in Chicago, IL. She grew up in a close-knit neighborhood of families who were also recent immigrants, proud of their Norwegian and English heritage. She often told stories of her city adventures with her sister, cousins and friends. Especially attending Cubs games at Wrigley Field with her father. The extended family also spent many vacations together at Lake Namakagon, WI. Stories of those trips were shared at reunions for many years and generations.

Zona's education beyond Luther High School in Chicago included clothing design school and college business classes at Northwestern University in Chicago.  It was while selling tickets for her sorority dance that she met fellow student, Richard “Dick” Markiewicz. He agreed to buy two tickets if she went to the dance with him. They were married in 1965 and raised three children. Deborah, Kirsten and Richard Jr “Rick”. 

The family moved to Manassas, VA when Dick was transferred to IBM. After building a house, Zona's father, Wallace, helped her landscape a rock garden in the yard. She mentioned it often in later years.

A move to Bemidji, MN followed several years later, when Zona and Dick bought a restaurant and a home near the lake. She continued to foster her creative side when she opened a ceramic studio in the basement of their home, teaching classes and selling her work.

When they moved to Minnesota for Dick's work, they bought a 3-acre hobby farm outside of St. Peter, MN. There they raised chickens, geese, ducks, and rabbits and had a large garden.  Zona enjoyed gardening and canning and cooking on the wood-fired stove they installed in the home. She was especially proud of her ability to bank a fire at night and restart it in the morning with the glowing coals.  They soon realized that it was much more work than they cared to do and moved into St. Peter. 

She worked as a bookkeeper for District 507 for many years and enjoyed her co-workers and time there.  On weekends, she fed her creativity by working at the St. Peter Woolen Mill.  She learned and taught machine knitting and eventually, quilting became her passion. She joined the Ewenique Quilt Club and continued working at the Woolen Mill even into retirement. There she met a group of fun vibrant friends who called themselves the Swamp Sisters. They would get together and hold their own mini retreats on weekends to quilt, eat, drink wine and just have fun. These women became some of her closest friends. 

The resilience she developed overcoming a stutter as a child, polio as a teen, and eventually a benign brain tumor in her 70’s without doubt was due to her deep faith and love-like devotion to God. That resiliency and faith guided her through Dick’s cancer diagnoses and death in 2006.

Zona loved her parents, sister, husband, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren dearly. She talked about them often even when distance made it difficult to see them.  She will be remembered as a sometimes shy, loving, funny, beautiful, creative woman who gave amazing hugs, who loved music but couldn't carry a tune, an artist at heart who loved color and someone who was always curious. 

She was preceded in death by her parents, her husband, Richard Edwin Markiewicz, Sr., her daughter and son-in-law, Deborah and Dave Schwarz and her sister and brother-in-law, Carol and Gene Gatzke.

She is survived by her children, Kirsten (Marla) and Rick (Diane). Grandchildren, Tim, Elissa, Rachel, Mitchell, Tyler and Natalie. Great-grandchildren, Connell, Anya, Milana, Maverick, and AJ. Nephews, Mike (Bridget) and Randy (Karen). She will be greatly missed by her family and friends.