Alva Bruce Alderman (1874-1917)

ALDERMAN, WELTY, HATHAWAY

Posted By: Dorian Myhre (email)
Date: 2/18/2022 at 20:10:51

From Nevada Representative February 23, 1917 (page 1)

OBITUARY

A. BRUCE ALDERMAN

Supt. A. B. Alderman of Linn county, commonly known in this county of his youth at "Bruce" Alderman, died Thursday morning at his home at Marion, Iowa, after an illness that had continued for some time and that was fully recognized before his death as highly critical. With him at the time of his death were his father and mother from Nevada and other relatives. Services will be held in his honor Saturday afternoon at Marion and the body will be brought to Nevada that evening. The funeral will be conducted Sunday at two-thirty from the Lutheran church by Rev. Shirck, and the interment will be in the Nevada cemetery.

Bruce Alderman was the eldest child of Mr. and Mrs. Silas P. Alderman, now of this city and he was born near Altoona in Polk county on September 10, 1874. He died as stated at Marion, Iowa, February 22, 1917, aged 42 years, 5 moths and 12 days. He came as a small child to Story county, when his parents located on their farm southeast of Nevada, and he there grew up to manhood. He taught school and in 1900 he took the federal census for Nevada. He attended the State Normal at Cedar Falls and graduated there in July, 1901. Immediately following his graduation he was married to Gertrude Welty, sister of the well-known Welty brothers of this and other counties, and they went soon afterwards to Walker, Linn county, where he had been engaged as superintendent of the town schools. He continued in this position for several years with manifest success; for when a vacancy occurred in the office of county superintendent of schools, he was appointed to that place, and thereupon he removed to the county seat at Marion, where he has since resided. His success in school work evidently continued after his transfer to county superintendency; for he was repeatedly elected and reelected and finally under the new law reappointed to that office, filling it for more than ten years and being still in the office when he died. He is survived by his wife and one son, Everett, and by his parents, brothers Floyd and Grover and one sister Edith, now Mrs. J. C. Hathaway.

Mr. Alderman was one of the young men who have been turned out from Nevada and Story county and who have proved themselves eminently useful in other fields of activity. He was a young man of fine character, undoubted ability, good education and hustling disposition. Naturally and inevitably he got along well and he was in the habit of dropping in around his old friends had the opportunity to keep track of him and to recognize how well he was acquitting himself. He was the sort of man who ought to have been good for thirty or forty years of usefulness and to all of his friends, in and about his old home of his newer home, or elsewhere, his depth must occasion a strong feeling of disappointment as well as regret.