Lois Marie Young

Lois Marie Young, neé Bode, of San Antonio and San Saba county, died age 99 on Saturday evening, October 30, 2021. She is survived by her elder son, Howard LeRoy (“Tex”) Malchow. Her younger son, George William (“Billy”) Malchow, predeceased her at the untimely age of 48 in 2001, as did her sole brother, Robert G. (“Buster”) Bode, who passed away in 1997.

Born on a ranch near Pontotoc, Lois Marie was the daughter of F. Otto Bode, of a large, long-established German-American Hill Country family, and Mary Lee Long (later Roberts). The Longs were also ranchers, prominent in San Saba County. Her parents separated in the 1930s and when, in 1939, F. Otto Bode died, it was, first, a well-loved uncle, Gene Long, who took her in. She subsequently joined her mother in San Antonio where she graduated from high school and, in 1943, married Howard Malchow, an Indiana farm-boy who, like many in the first years of WWII, came to Texas to learn to fly. Serving, first, in the US Army Air Corps (MATS) during the war, and subsequently as an USAF ROTC instructor, Captain Malchow was killed, age 39, in an air accident in 1958, leaving Lois Marie to return to San Antonio with her two young children in tow. In 1961, she married Albert. J. (“A.J.”) Young, a USAF civil servant who provided the kind of honest strength and stability she and her children needed. In later years A.J.’s work took them far from Texas—to Loring Air Force Base in Maine, and for some years to Athens, Greece.

Though her long life had more, perhaps, than a fair share of tragedy and difficulty, Lois Marie was more than a survivor. A beautiful woman well into middle-age, she also had a surprising degree of toughness, independence, and durability, and relished her ranching heritage. She was a long-time member of the Texas Pioneers, and loved trips during wild-flower time up to “the Place,” her father’s ranch house that she had inherited and preserved. In her later years, she took pride in her flower gardening at her home in northwest San Antonio and was a dependable source of gardening lore to friends and relations.

A memorial will be held via livestream from Sunset North Funeral Home on Saturday, January 22, at 12:00 noon. You may join the livestream by clicking the "Join Livestream" button below under Services.