Wanda Louise Russell

Wanda Louise Russell, 85, went home to be with the Lord on July 28, 2026.

Born December 15, 1940 in a coal camp near Hazard, Kentucky to miner Ernest Enos Russell and Elizabeth Brown Russell.

Wanda would find that life would take her very, very far from those mountains she so loved. When she was 12 her family migrated to Cincinnati in search of a better life after her father was injured and could no longer mine. At first, the city terrified her. “I thought that the Carew Tower would fall down on me,” she said later on. But after a while, she got to feel at home in Cincinnati, despite the difficulties she and thousands of other Appalachians faced there. She earned an associate’s degree in Dietetics from the-then Cincinnati Technical College (now Cincinnati State). However, life in Ohio would become extremely hard for the average worker in the 1990s, and Wanda was no exception.

In 1992, she and her daughter, Chrystal Lea Russell, moved out west to Denver. Wanda worked several jobs in food service, namely at Coors Field in Denver and at several Frisch’s restaurants back in Cincinnati. She loved crocheting and reading, especially Stephen King. She was generous and kind, a special soul who made everyone’s life better for having met her.

Wanda is predeceased by her parents Ernest and Elizabeth Russell, brothers Kenneth Russell of Mason, Ohio, Delmer Russell of New Orleans, Charles Russell of Ft Lauderdale, Florida, and J.D., and Paul Russell both of Cincinnati; sisters Hettie Anita Gabbard of Marion, Illinois and Eunice Imogene Johnson of Cleves, Ohio. Wanda is also predeceased by her daughter’s father, Franklin Delano Newberry of East Bernstadt, KY. Their daughter, Chrystal, survives.