Gail Bird Weinshenker

In lieu of flowers or any other contributions, Gail has requested that donations be made to CAPSA, in Logan, Utah.

Gail Bird Weinshenker was born as Gail Bird Parry on January 9, 1943 in Stillwater, Minnesota. She moved with her parents 7 times before settling in Pompton Lakes N.J. as a 6th grader.

She attended Jersey City Medical Center and was graduated in 1964 as registered nurse. Her first nursing job was at the renowned Montifiore Hospital in the Bronx, N.Y.

She worked at San Francisco General during the Hippie Movement and also volunteered to work with kids on drugs in Haight-Ashbury. As a visiting nurse in Palo Alto, she biked to her patients’ homes. Her career in nursing included many specialties such as pediatrics, ICU, hospice & home health care, and a Stanford medical expedition to Northern Mexico to help in village clinics. Her nursing career took full advantage of her intellectual abilities and compassionate nature.

She left nursing for a while and started her own landscape company, and then worked as the office manager for the business guru and author, Tom Peters. Her last business job was a managerial position in facilities with Alza Corporation in Palo Alto, CA.

During her time in California, she continued her “lifelong learning” by taking a college course each semester for 15 years. She discovered cultural anthropology, archaeology, paleontology and geology, which led her to traveling to the Caribbean, Mexico including the Yucatan Peninsula, Venezuela, Peru, Costa Rica, Papua New Guinea, Hong Kong, China, Japan, Alaska, Africa, England, Holland, Spain, France, among many others. She studied world religions her whole life. At 60, she learned to read and write Hebrew at the Jewish Community Center in Salt Lake City.

She watched the sunrise over Machu Picchu and the sunset over the Tasmanian Sea. She used a blowgun in the Amazon and ran flapping her arms among thousands of flamingos on a lake in Tanzania. She rode in a hot air balloon over the Masai Mara in Kenya. She experienced a regional tribal war in the highlands of Papua New Guinea and flew over the glaciers in a bush plane in Alaska. She felt at home in Hong Kong and in Rotorua, New Zealand. In California, she panned for gold in Downieville, water skied in Lake Tahoe, Lake Oroville (next to the dam), and The Delta. She also spent two weeks in a teepee in Montana as a team member on Jack Horner’s dinosaur dig. (He was the technical advisor for all of the Jurassic Park films.)

She has always had a love of theatre, art, music and dance starting as a teenager while attending performances in New York City and then, Santa Fe, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City and the many venues at USU and in Cache Valley. She was complimented on her singing (soprano) and was encouraged to join many choirs.

Volunteerism has also been important since her retirement. In Palo Alto, she was a team leader for the Urban Ministry that fed meals to the homeless and many others in need. She was an event planner for KARA, an organization that gave free grief counseling to individuals, schools and other organizations.

In Cache Valley, she was a coordinator within a local quilt guild, which made over 65 quilts for charities. She served on the CAPSA Board, and worked as a volunteer for the International Students and Wives Club at USU. At home, she taught free jewelry making, gave greeting card classes and quilting lessons to anyone who wanted to learn.

She is survived her daughter, Shannon Phillis, husband Tim and their son, Max.

Ned Weinshenker has two sons, David and Daniel. Ned’s grandchildren are Paul, Brian, Lydia and Rena.

Most of her step-family lives in Utah: John & Eileen Johnson’s and Effie & Kent Rich’s extended families, including their spouses, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She wishes to thank all of you for your loving support and generosity over the years.

A funeral service for Gail will be held on Saturday, August 29, 2026, at 11:00 AM at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Cobblestone 1st Ward, located at 420 West 100 North, Providence, Utah.

The burial will be at 11:00 AM at the South Morgan Cemetery in Morgan, Utah, on Monday, August 31, 2026.

The Cobblestone 1st Ward will be providing a Zoom broadcast of Gail's funeral service.  It can be accessed by clicking the following link: (link to be inserted soon)