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Frances Elizabeth Brophy 1884 - 1957

BROPHY, KERRIGAN, HUFSCHMIDT, SILBERBERG, SCARPINO

Posted By: Errin Wilker
Date: 1/26/2013 at 18:44:27

MISS BROPHY’S SUDDEN DEATH WAS TUESDAY

Frances Brophy, former director of Christmas seal sale work for the National Tuberculosis association, died Tuesday afternoon at her apartment in Lansing. Death was unexpected.

Miss Brophy was born in Lansing Feb. 23, 1884, and attended the parochial grade school here as a small child. She graduated from Iowa State Teachers college before she began teaching. She taught in schools in Allamakee county and in North Dakota until 1907, entering Mercy hospital training school in Chicago, where she graduated in 1911.

For several years Miss Brophy was in private duty nursing before she went into the public health nursing field. She was school nurse at Eveleth, Minn., for four years after which she became Red Cross nurse for Allamakee county for one year. Her next work was with the Sheppard-Towner maternity clinics, extension division of Iowa university. While there she became co-author of the Iowa dental plan for schools, which is in use all over the state.

In 1923 Miss Brophy went to the staff of the Iowa Tuberculosis association in Des Moines as organizer and director for Christmas seal sale work. As a result of her Iowa work she won national honors as consultant in fund raising, and at her retirement in 1949, Miss Brophyl was director of the Tuberculosis seal sale in the nation, having seen the annual sale grow from four million to twenty-million dollars over the years. Her work took her to every state in the union, to Canada,to England, Newfoundland and Hawaii.

Lansing was her home during the years since her formal retirement, and Miss Brophy devoted a great deal of time to volunteer work for the Allamakee County Tuberculosis Association and the Red Cross chapter.

Miss Brophy organized the first county-wide TB chest X-ray program in Allamakee county, and taught Red Cross home nursing classes as a part of her volunteer work, which brought her into contact with many residents of the area.

A charter member of the Des Moines Altrusa club, Miss Brophy was also a member of the American Nurses’ association, the Iowa Registered Nurses’ association, and was on the executive committee of the Iowa Tuberculosis association from 1953 until the time of her death. She was secretary of the association from 1954. In 1954 an award named in her honor was set up by the association to be given annually to a non-medical Iowa volunteer who has made an outstanding contribution in tuberculosis association work.

Locally, Miss Brophy was a member of the Catholic Women’s league and the Rosary society.

Her parents, John C. and Mary Kerrigan Brophy preceded Miss Brophy in death, as did a brother, Joseph K. Brophy and a foster sister, Cecile Brophy. Remaining are two sisters, Mrs. L.T. Hufschmidt of Lansing, and Mrs. W.G. Silberberg of Los Angeles, California, a niece, Mrs. Robert Scarpino of Des Moines, and two nephews, John C. Brophy of Lansing and Gene W. Silberberg of La Crosse, Wis.

Miss Brophy laid in state at the home of her sister, Mrs. Hufschmidt, where the rosary was said Thursday evening. Requiem high mass will be said at 9 o’clock Friday morning at Lansing, by Msgr. H.C. Scharphoff.

Source: Newspaper clipping hand-dated 1957.

The following clipping was glued in my grandaunt’s scrapbook next to the above obituary.

The passing of our good friend, Frances Brophy of Lansing, has saddened us here in the Pitt street word-factory, where she was an enjoyable visitor on many occasions. We shall miss her very much, but, as is true of all remarkable persons, she will leave her own ineradicable memorial in the hearts of her friends. We shall not see her again in this life, to be sure, but her presence will be warm and strong, called up often by this memory and that, living and imperishable. She moved though the life of this world with energetic grace, with curiosity and zest, and the new frontiers of eternity will be the, same exciting experience for her, of a certainty. Those of us who loved her will mourn that she is gone, but cannot fail to know, heart-deep, how much richer we are for having known her. Gracious memory surround you, gallant lady, peace attend.


 

Allamakee Obituaries maintained by Sharyl Ferrall.
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