By HDN staff
RHONDA BIRDTAIL CHANDLER
HAYS Rhonda L. Birdtail Chandler, 33, a former Hays resident, died Friday, Oct. 8, 1999, in Italy, of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Wake and Rosary services were held yesterday at St. Pauls Mission in Hays. Funeral Mass was 11 a.m. this morning with burial in the Birdtail Family Cemetery.
Chandler was born July 12, 1966, at the Birdtail Ranch in Lodgepole, to George Birdtail Jr. and Eleanor Brockie Brown. She graduated from the Hays/Lodgepole High School in 1984. She attended and graduated from Ft. Belknap College and also from S.I.P.I. in Albuquerque, N.M. Following her education she enlisted in the U.S. Army, where she was a food inspector. She was honorably discharged in 1994.
She married Craig L. Chandler of Hays. The couple later divorced.
In her school years she was active in basketball, cross country, cheerleading and loved horses.
At the time of her death she lived in Italy with her fiance, Salah Ud-Din, where she worked under contract for the government.
Chandler was preceded in death by her father, George Birdtail Jr., uncles, James Birdtail Sr., Reuben Birdtail, Pete Brown, Lawrence Brown, Emmett Brown, Joe Assinniboine, grandfathers, Victor Brockie and George Birdtail Sr., and grandmother, Jenny Cliff Birdtail.
Survivors include her daughter, Charlene Kae Chandler of Hays; her mother and stepfather, Eleanor Brockie and Bill Brown of Three Buttes; her grandmother, Rose Brockie of Harlem; brothers, Wendell Brown of Anchorage, Alaska, Warren, Doug and Jeffrey Brown of Three Buttes; a sister, Ella Brown of Three Buttes; and numerous aunts, uncles and cousins.
Adams Funeral Home of Malta is in charge of arrangements.
