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Dorothy May Gerber
1927 — 1989
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Dorothy May Gerber just starting out in south St. Louis, Missouri
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High School Student in 1946
This is the photograph which appeared in The Beacon of 1946, the yearbook of Grover Cleveland High School, St. Louis, Missouri. Dorothy graduated in the Class of June 1946.
Mr. Alfred Friedli was the Assistant Principal of the high school at the time and played a significant role in encouraging Dorothy to continue her education after graduating.
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Graduates of Elmhurst College, 1950
In the photograph above, Dorothy (on the right) and an unidentified friend display their diplomas upon graduating from Elmhurst College, Elmhurst, Illinois on 4 June 1950. Dorothy majored in Philosophy and Christian Education and was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree. It appears the two new graduates are standing in front of South Hall, a residential dormitory for women.
Alfred Friedli, Dorothy's old high school assistant principal, was the Dean of the College at the time of Dorothy's graduation. His is one of the signatures which appears on her diploma.
At the time of this celebration, Dorothy could not have foreseen that in four years she would return to Elmhurst College and again live in a dormitory.
In the intervening years she earned a master's degree in Christian Education from Eden Theological Seminary, Webster Groves, Missouri. While at Eden, she met and married a young man studying for the ministry. A year later, after his graduation from Eden and ordination, they left the Midwest behind and relocated to the Deep South. It must have been a good move, for there the young couple became parents of a beautiful, intelligent child.
After about a year in Mississippi, her husband was offered and accepted a teaching position in the Religion Department at Elmhurst. By the beginning of the academic year in 1954, Dorothy was back in Illinois. Among other duties, her husband was to keep an eye on the male students living in Irion Hall. Her family's apartment was in the basement of that dormitory, next to the recreation room filled with ping pong and pool tables. The young men of the dormitory who had signed up for laundry service periodically left their bags of soiled linen piled in a corner of this rec room for pick up and Dorothy had to make sure her young son did not practice his mountain climbing skills on this monumental temptation.
Brief Genealogy
Dorothy May Gerber's family
J. W. Fiegenbaum's family
Fiegenbaum - Gerber family
J. W.'s 1st marriage
Patricia (Hannigan) Keyes' family
Francis L. Correia's family
Details of the birth family of Francis L. Correia (1940-2000) are not currently known.