Long-time Corrales resident and co-founder of Casa San Ysidro museum Shirley Jolly Minge has died.

She was 77 when she passed away August 17 in a Las Cruces hospital after a heart attack with complications caused by arthritis.

The U.S. Army Reserve colonel and her husband, historian Ward Alan Minge, purchased the old Gutierrez residence near the historic old San Ysidro Church in the 1952 and began a restoration project lasting nearly 50 years.

The old home, with its added outbuildings (such as a granary and stables) and antique furnishing and implements, was purchased by the City of Albuquerque in 1998 as a branch of the Albuquerque Museum.

Born in Colorado Springs, she received her education in California, Norway, Denver and New Mexico. At 18, she worked for the Alaskan Communications Service during World War II. She joined the Army in 1949, and after leaving active duty, she rose to the rank of colonel in the reserves.

During restoration work on what is now Casa San Ysidro Museum, she produced many mosaics from stone hauled to the old home. “After Acoma Pueblo gave us paving stones for the sala grande and chapel, she did mosaics,” her husband recalled. “The stones, most of them five to ten inches thick, I rolled into place and leveled each on its bed of sand. She, in turn, took remnants of shale to tamp into the interstices.”

She was also known throughout Corrales as the person who helped with income tax returns. She started when her neighbor confessed he had trouble with the tax forms, and soon had a reputation around the village as a volunteer tax preparer,often working from the Corrales Senior Center.

She is survived by her husband, Ward Alan Minge, of Waterville, Kansas, and children and grandchildren.