Dorothy A. Van Giessen, 85

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Dorothy A. Van Giessen, 85, died Dec. 21, 2006, in Indiana. A funeral Mass was held Dec. 27 at the Church of the Nativity in Portage, Ind.

Dorothy Ann Foley was born Dec. 17, 1920, on a farm six miles south of Blair to Robert and Alma (Johnson) Foley.

She attended Maney School and graduated from Blair High School in 1938. She attended St. Catherine’s School of Nursing, Creighton University, and received her Bachelor of Nursing degree in May 1941.

She was employed by St. Catherine’s Hospital as a nurse until she joined the Army Nurse Corps on Feb. 18, 1941, and was assigned to Camp Robinson Base Hospital in Arkansas. She completed the Army Desert Training Course in Arizona in preparation for overseas duty. She departed Camp Kilmer, N.J., about the USS Susan B Anthony in a convoy of 100 ships on Feb 27, 1944. The convoy arrived in Belfast, Ireland, on March 9, 1944.

After more training, she landed on Omaha Beach on July 12, 1944, by landing craft and had to climb the steepest hill to reach the hospital area where she worked in an evacuation hospital in Gen. George Patton’s army until the end of the war. She achieved the rank of First Lieutenant, and received the American Campaign Medal, four Bronze Stars, and the WWII Victory Medal.

In 1946 she married Willis Van Giessen and lived in Gary, Ind. She continued her nursing career until she retired.

She is survived by two children and their spouses, John and Kathy Van Giessen of Birmingham, Ala., and Sandra and Terry Hufford of Portage, Ind., six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren, and five brothers and sisters: Dr. Robert Foley of Tyndall, S.D., John, Janet and Jim of Blair; and Jerry of Omaha.

She was preceded in death by her husband in 1993, and a sister, Margaret Wilkinson.

~~~Obituaries courtesy of the Nebraska Washington County Genealogical Society. Newspaper clippings on file in the Blair, Nebraska Public Library~~~