Chandra Hinman

A memorial service for former Faulk County resident Chandra Mae Alice (Gilbert) Hinman was held at 11:30 a.m., Saturday, June 30 at Luce Funeral Home in Faulkton with Rev. Julie Nygaard officiating. Her ashes will be buried at the family plot in the Miranda Cemetery.

Mrs. Hinman died May 12 at her home in San Diego. She was 76 years old.

Known as “Chan” to her friends, she was born on Leap Day, Feb. 29, 1936, in Hendricks Village, Mn., to William and Katherine Gilbert. She was six years old when the family moved to Miranda in 1942. William Gilbert was the railroad depot agent until he passed away in 1957. Her mother was Miranda’s postmaster until she retired in 1983. Chan attended Miranda’s one-room schoolhouse and then went to Faulkton High School, where she graduated with the Class of 1954, forging a lifelong bond with classmates who continue to hold regular reunions (alumni will gather this year in Faulkton over the Fourth of July holiday week).

Chan attended college for a year and later moved to Denver, where she worked for the telephone company. That’s also where she met the late Tom Hinman, who was studying to become a teacher. They were married in the Miranda Methodist Church in 1957 and settled in northern California, where Mr. Hinman taught junior high school. They were divorced in 1977.

While living in northern California, she was an active member of the United Methodist Church in Fremont, Ca. In 1974, Chan was selected by Church Women United to be part of a peace-building delegation to Asia. One of her most vivid memories from that trip was participating in a memorial service in Hiroshima, one of two towns in Japan where an atomic bomb was dropped in an effort to end World War II.

After Chan returned from that mission, she served as a political aide to an Alameda County supervisor and then worked briefly for the county’s social services division. She moved to San Diego in 1985, where she began a long career in Christian education and administration at Wesley United Methodist Church. Chan was instrumental in the founding of what became the largest Vietnamese-speaking Methodist congregation in the United States.  She also started a weekly book club that still meets every Wednesday morning at a San Diego restaurant. She retired in 1991 and became an active volunteer at another Methodist church in San Diego, with duties ranging from chairing the Staff Parish Relations Committee to baking two kinds of cookies each week for the Sunday night worship service.

More than 150 people -- including 10 pastors and a district superintendent -- attended her memorial service at Mission Hills United Methodist Church in San Diego on June 3. The Rev. Karen Clark Ristine officiated at that service.

Chan is survived by a large extended family (she was one of five generations living in South Dakota and California). Among her survivors: her mother, Mrs. Katherine Slater, of Miranda; her brother and sister-in-law, Al and Rita Gilbert of West Concord, Minn.; her son, Mitch Hinman, of Tracy, Ca.; her daughter, Kari Wallick, of Los Gatos, Ca., and her partner, Sandi Dolbee, of San Diego. She also leaves behind two stepdaughters, Connie Work of Tennessee and Sue Petrick of Illinois; as well as several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.