Dorothy Emmert (1910-1935)

EMMERT

Posted By: Debra Scott Hierlmeier (email)
Date: 11/25/2008 at 15:29:42

Dorothy Elizabeth Emmert
(May 4, 1910 - June 17, 1935)
PHOTO AVAILABLE

Succumbs to Heart Malady
Popular Avoca young Lady dies after lingering illness. Funeral Wednesday.

“Death lies on her like an untimely frost.
Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.”
-----Shakespeare

Our young friend, Dorothy Elizabeth Emmert, was taken from us early Monday morning as one might pluck a half blown rose at dawning from amidst a myriad of full blown and fading blossoms.

Stricken six years ago with a fatal heart affection, Dorothy has borne the physical suffering that wore away her young life with a fortitude and brave smile worthy of the strongest of us. When she was able to see her friends, they saw only her smile, and heart only a word of hearty greeting, never a complaint nor a bid for sympathy. Through all these years, her constant companion and nurse was her faithful and sorrowing mother, but neither ever saw the other give way to grief while they waited for what they knew would be the result. Being a member of a family of physicians and surgeons who realized soon after she became who realized soon after she became ill that her malady was fatal, the opinion of the best men of the profession was sought but they could do nothing. The only hope was to prolong her life a short time.

Mrs. Emmert and Dorothy had spent the past winter in San Antonio to avoid the rigors of an Iowa winter and had returned home early in May since which time she had been confined to her bed, and grew steadily worse until the end came when she slipped away at 4:30 Monday morning.

Dorothy was a daughter of the late Dr. D. F. and Mrs. Elizabeth Childs Emmert, and was born in Avoca, May 4, 1910. A sister, born some two years before Dorothy had died in infancy. She was the youngest of Mrs. Emmert’s children, her brothers being Dr. Fred Emmert of St. Louis and Childs Emmert of Red Oak.

Dorothy graduated from the Avoca high school in 1927 and entered Lindenwood College, a school for girls at St. Charles, Missouri, near St. Louis, in the autumn of that year. It was upon her second year at Lindenwood that her heart trouble became known. In September 1929, she entered Northwestern University as a junior and continued her work there until the close of the fall semester of 1930, when she was sent home on account of her health. She was advised to enter a California University the next year which she hoped to do, but when she arrived there she found it too strenuous for her strength, and was compelled to give up further school work. She had chosen journalism as her major in her college course, and had been taking an extension course in short story writing the past winter. Dorothy was a brilliant student throughout her local school and college attendance, and displayed much more than ordinary ability in writing.

She was a member of the Presbyterian church of Avoca, a member of Kappa Alpha Theta sorority at Northwester, and a member of Chapter GC, P.E. O.

Funeral services were held at the Emmert home at 2:30 Wednesday, conducted by Reverend Chambers of Atlantic Presbyterian church with interment in Atlantic cemetery beside her father. To uncles and four cousins carried her to her last resting place.

The casket was almost hidden by flowers and as we looked upon the quiet figure within, we felt that in her youth she was the most beautiful flower of all and death had come as the immortal poet had said it should when he wrote these words:
“Death should come
Gently to one of gentle mold, like thee,
As light winds, wandering through groves of bloom.

Detach the delicate blossoms from the tree,
Close thy sweet eyes calmly, and without pain.
And we will trust in God to see thee yet again.”
-----Bryant

Dr. and Mrs. Max Emmert, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Emmert, Mrs. Ida Emmert, and Mrs. Hugh McCullough and son, Charles of Omaha; Dr. and Mrs. Ralph Keyser of Marshalltown, D. A. Hardi(?) and sons, Walter, Frank, Clifford and Paul of Savannah, Mo., Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Gillette and Mr. and Mrs. Sam Childs of Atlantic were out of town relatives who attended the funeral services.

From the Scrapbooks of Bessie Gross Gustafsen
Source: Avoca Journal Herald