Rita's Livestream Service will begin at 1 p.m. CT on Wednesday, June 3, 2026. To view the service, please visit the church's website (www.messiahchurch.com) at the time of the service and click the "live broadcast" link.

SUN PRAIRIE / TOMAHAWK - Rita Marilyn Shellberg (nee Hartman), age 89, passed away on Monday, May 25, 2026. She was born on September 8, 1936, to Martha Ingeborg Hartman (nee Nilsson) and Karl Albin Hartman.

Rita met her husband Herb at a young adult event at her Lutheran church and they were married the next year, in 1958. They made a great life with and for each other for the next 46 years. They enjoyed each other’s company immensely, held the same deep commitments to friends and family, and had a shared dream of their retired life on a lake “up north” which they saw come true and into which they extended an open invitation to everyone they knew and loved.

Rita was a loving, supportive, forgiving and always encouraging mother to Pam, Herb and Ken, and a good friend to them in their adulthoods. She held a great deal of love and appreciation for her bonus daughter, Judy (Armelin). She was an utterly devoted grandmother to Ashley Hawkins and Danielle and Mike Gritzenbach, and an adored and adoring “Grammy” to her great-grandchildren, Jameson, Haleigh and Olivia. She was dearly loved by her two nephews and their families, Mike and Penny McNamara, Bill and Kelly McNamara, and great-nephews and great-nieces, Dylan, Connor, and Kayla McNamara, and Kerry Dalton (Sean).

Rita graduated from Chicago Vocational High School with training in secretarial skills. She had a crazy words-per-minute typing rate and used her shorthand right up to drafting her last annual Christmas letter. After high school, she worked as a secretary for the Illinois Central Railroad and then later at Pullman Bank. She was also a substitute secretary in the Rhinelander Schools in her retirement.

Rita found great joy in woodworking and in refinishing and reupholstering old furniture. She loved to read and to do word puzzles and jigsaw puzzles. She enjoyed cooking for the family and friends and was renowned for her Swedish coffee bread, Swedish pancakes, pepparkakor and glögg. She had a deeply hospitable spirit and was happiest when surrounded by big groups of family and friends.

But Rita was really never happier than when she was floating on a raft on Manson Lake. She loved the water whether she was in it - swimming, floating, playing volleyball with the granddaughters or neighbor kids - or on it in a kayak or on the pontoon, or near it doing yardwork and tending to her flower gardens. She couldn’t have loved or appreciated her lake neighbors more than she did. A million happy memories and traditions were created with them.

Her granddaughters, Danielle and Ashley, were really and truly the great joys of her life and wherever Gram was, the girls knew they were home. She was grandma, confidant and friend; she was respite and refuge and source of unending pride, encouragement, support and love. Rita was finding that same joy in the great-grands, her “littles,” playing games with them, and following with great interest their growing personalities, and their interests in various sports and gymnastics.

Rita really just loved life. She was fun and she was funny. So often people would say, “Your mom is such a hoot,” and she was. She was a dear friend treasured by many - a good listener and always very “real.” We loved her so much and will miss her terribly.

Rita was predeceased by her husband, Herbert Shellberg, Jr., and her son, Herbert Shellberg, III.

A funeral service will be held at MESSIAH LUTHERAN CHURCH, 5202 Cottage Grove Road, Madison, at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, June 3, 2026, with Pastor Jeff Vanden Heuvel presiding. Family and friends who wish to view the service via LIVESTREAM may do so by going to the church’s website (www.messiahchurch.com) at the time of the service and clicking the “live broadcast” link. Visitation will be held at GUNDERSON EAST FUNERAL AND CREMATION CARE, 5203 Monona Drive, Madison, from 4 p.m. until 7 p.m. on Tuesday, June 2, 2026, and also at the church from 11 a.m. until the time of the service on Wednesday.

In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to Agrace HospiceCare, the Manson Lake Association, or Messiah Lutheran Church. Online condolences may be made at www.gundersonfh.com.

Gunderson East

Funeral & Cremation Care

5203 Monona Drive

(608) 221-5420

Rita M Shellberg

September 08, 1936 - May 25, 2026

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