Groff, Sue Ann (Mrs. Robert Bob) 1919-2004

GROFF, OVERTON, TALBOT

Posted By: Wilma J. Vande Berg - volunteer (email)
Date: 7/2/2014 at 05:00:28

Sioux Center News of March 31, 2004

Sue Ann Groff, 84, of Sioux Center, formerly of Topeka, Kansas, died Wednesday, March 25, in the nursing wing of Sioux Center Community Hospital, where she had been since December 10, 2003.

A memorial funeral service will take place in the chapel at First Reformed Church at 1:30 p.m. on April 6 with the Rev. Roger Voskuil officiating. Interment will be in the Groff family section at Memorial Park Cemetery in Topeka.

Sue Ann Overton Groff was born September 11, 1919, in Greeley, Kansas, the daughter of Rolla B. Overton and Bula Alia (Talbot) Overton. The family later moved to Pratt, Kansas, and then to Topeka, where she graduated from Topeka High School in -the Class of 1937. She graduated from the University of Kansas with a degree in education in May 1941.

She married James Robert (Bob) Groff of Topeka on August 16, 1941, in Richmond, Virginia, following his graduation from the Coast Artillery Officers School at Fort Monroe, Virginia. During World War II, while her husband was overseas in the Pacific Theater, she worked as a secretary in the School of Engineering at the university, under a U. S. navy program for the training of machinist mates.

Upon his return from Army service in March 1946, they moved to Chicago, Illinois, where their son Bruce was born in 1948. The family returned to Topeka in 1949 when her husband entered Washburn University School of Law. A daughter, Kyle, was born in Topeka in 1952. Upon her husband's semi-retirement from the practice of law in 1990, they moved to Sioux Center. She was a member of First Reformed Church, where she was a member of Priscilla Circle.

Survivors are her husband of Sioux Center; her daughter Kyle and son-in-law Val Rader and their sons, John, Jim and Alex, of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, formerly of Anchorage, Alaska; her daughter in-law, Janet Groff of Sioux Center and her three children, Sarah and her husband Brian, Andrew Groff and his wife Theresa and Matthew Groff and his wife Katie; and one great-grandson, Ambrose P. Dukek. She was preceded in death by two brothers, D. William Overton and Robert B. Overton and her son Dr. Bruce Talbot Groff.