DeAnn Stone Ebener

DeAnn Stone Ebener, 70, died peacefully at home on June 6, 2024.  In her last few days at home in hospice care, she was surrounded by her family and close friends.  

DeAnn is survived by her husband of 47 years, Dan, her sons Josh and Zach, her daughters-in-law Paula and Nikki, and her seven grandchildren: Annalyn, Sofia, Beau, Mia, Stella, Malu and Kenna. Her family life as a wife, mother, mother-in-law and grandmother meant everything to DeAnn.

DeAnn was born on the south side of Chicago on August 21, 1953, before moving to Palatine, IL in junior high school, and then to the Quad Cities in 1971 to attend Augustana College. There, she met her husband Dan in a social work group class, and she graduated in 1975.  She worked with Dan at Bethany Home, where they made lifelong friends, and she moved to Dubuque in 1976 to attend Wartburg Seminary for one year before deciding to get her Masters in Social Work at the University of Iowa instead.  

De and Dan were married January 2, 1977 while living in Dubuque, then moved to Nyack, NY in 1979, and for the next four years, they traveled throughout the US and Europe.   De loved to explore new places, traveling to 34 countries and almost every US state.  She has magnets on her refrigerator, and lots of photo albums, to prove it.  

With seven grandkids born in the last nine years, she was immersed and thrived in her role as “Grandma”.   She turned her living room and family room into a playroom that looked like a preschool classroom, so the grandkids loved spending time playing with her at her house. She loved buying Lego sets, arts and crafts supplies, Care Bears and many other toys for them to play with.  

Friends and acquaintances of DeAnn often used the word “sweet” to describe her, and indeed her love and kindness to others shined through every day.  She was the embodiment of social work, using her intuition superpowers to pick up on the said and unsaid things in a room.  She used those abilities to help others to see their social and emotional reality with gentleness and grace.  She also had a “sassy” side to her, and she knew how to “get New York” with people, as she would say, when she needed to be assertive, especially with bureaucrats.

Her career as a social worker spanned five decades.  She was a childcare counselor, a family therapist, and a school social worker, both for Black Hawk Area Special Education District and for the East Moline Schools.  For 11 years, she taught the school social work class as an adjunct professor for the Masters in Social Work program at St. Ambrose University.

DeAnn was an avid Lutheran her entire life.  With her husband, Dan, an avid Catholic, she thought of her marriage as a witness to the importance of ecumenism in a world that is too often divided among Christians.   Fr. William “Digger” Dawson preached about the beauty of ecumenism at their wedding.  DeAnn thought of her boys, who were both baptized, confirmed and raised both Lutheran and Catholic, as signs of the strength of ecumenism.  

DeAnn was passionate about social justice, especially concerning kids.  She thought of kids as not only being our future, but our present, and believed that not enough time, attention and resources are spent on the young.   As a school social worker, she learned first-hand the needs of kids, and she advocated for better priorities.  As a mother and grandmother, she expressed concern for the future of our world, especially wanting to see an end to war, violence and global climate change.

Some of DeAnn’s many other interests include visiting with her card club friends, reading fiction, making playlists of love songs on “Alexa”, watching the deer in her yard, buying flowers for the garden, decorating the house for each holiday and season, going to U2 and Bruce Springsteen concerts, painting and taking art classes at the Figge Art Museum, seeing the giraffes at Niabi Zoo, celebrating birthdays, baking cookies, writing her annual Christmas letter, visiting her lifelong friend Claire in California, seeing her Croatia friends and going to the farmers market with her nephew Luke.  

She always looked forward to planning and cooking weekly Sunday Night Dinners for her family and any friends who were able to join.  Conversations with loved ones and friends were her sweet spot.

Asked for comments for this obituary, her grandkids said many of the same things above, and added, “she always liked hearing what other people had to say”, and “she was always thinking of others before she did something”, and “she was always nice, but could be tough”.  

DeAnn is preceded in death by her parents DeWayne and Grace (Newcomb) Stone, her sister and best friend, Cynthia “B” Reed, and her godson Ben Ebener.

Visitation for DeAnn will be from 12-2 pm, followed by a funeral service at 2 pm, and a community meal at 3 pm, on Saturday, June 15, all at St. Paul Lutheran Church, 2136 N. Brady St., Davenport. In lieu of flowers, donations are encouraged for St. Paul Lutheran Church.  Halligan-McCabe-DeVries Funeral Home is assisting the family with arrangements.