Sally Henning Perham went to be with the Good Lord and the Loving Angels in Heaven on June 11, 2025, 93 years young, after a brief illness. She was born on April 12, 1932, to Glen and Fern (Norton) Henning and grew up on a farm in the Tarkio, Missouri, area, and graduated from Tarkio High School in 1950 where she enjoyed being a proud member of the Glee Club. She had a great childhood being a part of a large and close family. There was always something to do and keep busy with. Her brothers and sisters (nine in total) who preceded her in going to be with the Lord were Jim, Betty, Russell (Cotton), Carolyne, Pat, Norma, and Mary Ann. She has a sole surviving sibling, her loving brother, Virgil Henning, Tarkio. Sally was always close to Virgil, and very fond of him and also with his wife, Sandra, of many years, Sally’s sister-in-law, and loved speaking with her frequently and considered her a good friend. She loved talking with her younger sister, Norma Mather, and missed her terribly when she went to be with the Lord. Upon Norma’s passing Sally loved speaking with Norma’s daughter, Cindy (Mather), Sally’s niece. She enjoyed hearing about her new house renovations, and the various updates about her daughter, Jill, and her family.

After graduating from high school Sally went to a business college in Kansas City, Missouri, on a scholarship. While there she lived with and was a nanny to a family in the Brookside neighborhood in Kansas City. She enjoyed learning about accounting and bookkeeping which she used later in her life. After graduation she then relocated to Des Moines, Iowa, and worked in various jobs. It was there she met her future husband, Eugene M. Perham. After a few years in Des Moines she moved to Nebraska with her husband, and then in 1957 they relocated to Miami, Florida, where they bought their first house, put down roots, and welcomed a son, Michael, who was born in 1963. Sally worked a few jobs in the next few years – Florida Power & Light, Mutual of Omaha Insurance Company, and then settled into a new career working for AT&T where she worked for the next 25 years until her retirement. She loved working for AT&T and made many lifelong company friends she kept in touch with while in the “Pioneers,” a group for AT&T retirees, for many years after leaving the company in 1990. Through a series of events she went into the apartment management business and was the manager for a few large apartment buildings, which she loved. Sally was a people person at her core and loved meeting new people, talking about many various topics, and learning from people about their cultures. Many tenants were students attending college in Miami and she loved learning about their countries and cultures. She excelled and took pride in all of her various job(s), and always excelled beyond what was expected of her. She was a quick learner and took pride in her ability to learn new things fairly quickly. She loved being challenged to be better and smarter than she was yesterday.

Sally loved working on her various craft projects and could sit for hours working on a creative project back when her eyesight was better – whether it was a gourmet basket she would give as a gift to someone, a Red Hat project, her garden, cooking, and many other pursuits. She was a loyal member of “The Woman of the Moose” and participated in many charity projects in her lodge, and also where she met several lifelong friends she regularly played cards with, went to dinner with, and travelled with on week-long cruises. In 2002, her husband passed away from a long illness and she decided she needed a change so she bought a house in Fairfax, Missouri, where she (along with the help from her son, Michael) renovated a 100-year-old house. She lived next to her sister, Pat Kruse, and enjoyed barbecues with her siblings and friends, working in her garden with her beautiful rose bushes, and eating at the Dairy Diner (especially a pork tenderloin sandwich) in the summer, which was a block from her house. Sally wasn’t really comfortable not working on something and staying busy, so she decided to get a job at the local nursing home, Tarkio Rehabilitation & Healthcare, where she worked for a few years in food service and patient assistance delivering food. She really loved talking to the residents, making them feel good, and being greeted with a smile which she felt so good about – helping make a positive impact in their lives. After careful consideration she decided to move back to Florida after a few years where she lived for the next 20 years until her passing. Sally always loved being busy doing something to stay active and that she enjoyed, so she found a part-time job working in the timeshare industry. She also joined a local “Red Hat” luncheon group and made many friends she felt so close to over the past 20 years. After her “official” retirement some years later, Sally moved to a long term care facility where she loved playing bingo and card games, and again, meeting new people. Sally had a healthy competitive streak and took pride in doing a great job with whatever task she was given. In her last few years she enjoyed mostly talking to friends and family on the phone every day, watching her favorite TV shows that included Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, old Westerns, the Food Channel cooking shows on the weekend (The Pioneer Woman, The Kitchen, and others), The Bold and the Beautiful, and keeping up with current news events on various news channels. She is survived by her loving son, Michael, and a few very close personal and lifetime friends who haven’t already gone to be with the Lord as of yet, (Miss Dorothy, Miss Wanda, Greg, Carmen and Kyle), but she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she will see all of them again along with all of her other friends and family. One of her very close friends of 40 years (Gayle) went to be with the Lord a few months ago. Sally missed her very, very much, but she also knew she would see her soon as well. Sally had a very, very strong faith in the Good Lord and loved all of her angels she knew watched out for her, protecting her. She credited her strong faith with getting her through many tough challenges that she not only survived, but often flourished from, during her long and blessed life. She believed strongly in the power of having a strong faith, in forgiveness, how love can overcome hate, and she wasn’t afraid to take chances and live her life on her terms. She had no regrets and always looked forward, not backwards.

There will be a small ceremony and life celebration at Center Grove Cemetery in the near future where her late husband was interred in 2003. She loved the idea of being surrounded by many of her family at Center Grove, growing up in the area and spending so much time in and around Westboro, Missouri. She had many fond memories of being there years before. She loved her Henning family very much and appreciated each one of them for all of their unique gifts, and accepted each of them for their perspectives and what she could learn about life from each one of them. She looked forward to being with all of them in Heaven soon.