Opal was born on October 29, 1912 in Chase County, Nebraska to William and Nina May Day. She was the fifth in a family of eight children. Opal and her family lived in a typical rural early 20th-century Nebraska fashion, in which she and her sisters often rode horses, or in a buggy, to the one-room school they attended two miles from their home. In 1929, Opal moved with her family to Red Bluff, California. After finishing high school in Red Bluff, she continued her education at Pasadena College during the 1932-33 school term, returning afterward to Nebraska. Opal pursued a career in education, and in 1936 began teaching in a one-room school only six miles from where she grew up. She continued to teach for the next 13 years in Nebraska, and improved her teaching skills by part-time attendance at teachers' colleges in Greeley and Kearney, Nebraska. In 1949 she accepted an offer of a teaching position at Santa Fe School in Shafter, California. It was in Shafter where she met her future husband, William "Bill" Ratzlaff, a farmer, whom she married in 1952. Opal began a new teaching position at Maple Elementary during the same year. In 1953 she gave birth to her one and only child, Joel. In 1967, she began teaching at Richland Elementary, from which she retired in 1980. In 2005, several years after the death of her husband, she moved from her rural home west of Shafter, to Glenwood Gardens Independent Living in Bakersfield. Opal entered the arms of her Savior on March 21, 2016, at Clare Bridge Place memory care facility in the Brookdale Riverwalk complex in Bakersfield. She was preceded in death by her parents; sisters, Agnes, Fern, Lillian, Julia, Wilma, Naomi; brother, Clifford; husband, Bill; and daughter-in-law, Janice. She is survived by her son, Joel; daughter-in-law, Tessie; granddaughters, Stephanie Dobrenen and Julie Woodward; grandsons-in-law, Brian Dobrenen and David Woodward; great-grandchildren, Elliott, Silas, and Roslynn Dobrenen, and Audrey Woodward. The viewing is scheduled for Monday, March 28th at Peters Funeral Home, 844 E. Lerdo Hwy. in Shafter from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. The funeral is scheduled for Tuesday, March 29th at 10:00 a.m. at the Mennonite Brethren Church, 400 Kern St. in Shafter, graveside service to follow at Shafter Memorial Park, 18662 Santa Fe Way. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Campus Crusade for Christ International, 100 Lake Hart Drive, Orlando, FL 32832, or any other Christian ministry or charity of your choice.