Kluckhohn, Lucille 1897-1977

KLUCKHOHN, WHITCOMB

Posted By: Viv Reeves (email)
Date: 8/3/2007 at 13:03:42

LeMars Sentinel, Monday, June 20, 1977, Page 1, Columns 5-6 & Page 10 Columns 1-2:

Mrs. Lucille Kluckhohn Funeral Rites Tuesday

Mrs. Lucille Whitcomb Kluckhohn, 79, LeMars, died Saturday morning (June 19, 1977) at Floyd Valley hospital, LeMars, after a lengthy illness and a hospitalization of 11 days.

She was the wife of longtime LeMars school superintendent, Dr. Harvey N. Kluckhohn, now retired.

Funeral services will be at 9 a.m. Tuesday at First United Methodist church, LeMars, with burial that afternoon at Oakdale cemetery, Adel, Iowa.

Dr. Everett Staats will officiate at both services, with the Mauer funeral home in LeMars in charge of the arrangements. Friends may call at the funeral home between 7 and 9 Monday evening.

Mrs. Kluckhohn was born on a farm near Peru in Madison county, Iowa, Sept. 1, 1897, to Dennis and Aldia Whitcomb. Except for a few months in Oklahoma around 1907, she lived her entire life in Iowa.

She attended Madison county rural schools and after the family's moving to Winterset in 1910, completed her grade school education there.

She graduated from Winterset high school in 1916. The following year she taught a rural school in Madison county. In the fall of 1917 she enrolled in the elementary education department of Des Moines college, completing the primary training course in the summer of 1919, after a semester out for another stint of rural teaching.

Following her college graduation she had two years of elementary teaching, one at Anita, and one at Adel, where the family had moved in the summer of 1920.

Sept. 1, 1921, she was married to Harvey N. Kluckhohn, a young schoolman she had met at college. The couple lived at Mitchellville, Iowa, where her husband was serving as school superintendent for one school year, moving to West Union, Iowa, in the summer of 1922, where they lived for six years, with Harvey serving as superintendent of the public school system.

The Kluckhohns came to LeMars in August 1928 and this community has been their home since that time.

In the fall of 1951, her children grown, Mrs. Kluckhohn returned to teaching and taught for 13 years before retiring in 1968--one year in the upper-grade room at Struble and 12 years (with three years out in 1963-1966 while caring for her aged mother) as a second grade teacher in the Merrill elementary school.

Mrs. Kluckhohn, until prevented by illness, was active in church and community work. She was a member of the First Methodist church where for many years she taught Sunday school classes of high school youth and was a member (and past president) of the Women's Society of Christian Service.

She also was active for a number of years in the 1930s and early 40s in the girl scout work, serving as leader of a Brownie troop at the Clark school and later for a time as local girl scout commissioner.

She was a longtime member and a past president of the local P. E. O. chapter. In recent years she held membership in the world war 1 veterans auxiliary.

She was preceded in death by her parents, four brothers, Freddie and Richard, who died in infancy, and Roland and Raymond Whitcomb Nelson.

She is survived by her husband, Dr. Harvey N. Kluckhohn, a retired LeMars public school superintendent and Westmar professor; two daughters, Ruth (Mrs. Robert Eckles) of Des Moines and Shirley (Mrs. Richard Stover) of Riverside,Calif.; four grandsons, Randall Perry, Ft. Lauderdale, Flax, Richard Perry, Iowa City, and Brian and Jeffrey Stover, Riverside, Calif.; a nephew, Michael Hawbaker, Sweet Home, Ore., who lived in the Kluckhohn home for nine years in the late 1940s and 1950s; one sister, Betty Stern, Sweet Home, Ore., and six nieces and two other nephews.