May Wilding; Simi Valley Resident, Educator

May Wilding, a longtime Simi Valley resident and school volunteer, died Thursday at Pleasant Valley Convalescent Home in Camarillo. She was 84.

Wilding was a native of England, where she taught elementary school for more than 40 years.

“She loved children,” her daughter, Monica Strunk, said. “She was around them all her life.”

Strunk, who also lives in Simi Valley, followed her mother’s footsteps into the classroom and now teaches elementary school in Los Angeles.

“I was in her classrooms since I was 11,” Strunk said. Wilding went to work as a teacher when she was 16 but had to quit during the Great Depression, which affected England as much as the United States, Strunk said.

“She had to make room for single women and married men,” Strunk said. But during World War II, Strunk was pressed into duty in the classroom and worked in education until her retirement in the early 1970s.

She moved to Simi Valley in 1975 to join her daughter. She volunteered as a tutor at Mountain View Elementary school.

“She helped the children with special needs,” Strunk said. She also took up oil painting in her retirement and became “rather good at it,” Strunk said.

Wilding is also survived by Strunk’s husband, Melvin, and the couple’s two children, Matthew and Melina. Wilding’s husband, Walter, died in 1971.

A memorial service is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. Tuesday at St. Francis of Assisi Episcopal Church in Simi Valley. Wilding is to be cremated, and her ashes will be scattered in the same rose garden near London where her husband’s ashes were spread.