Irene Judith Tweet (1911-2006)

TWEET, HENG, FROSLAND, BUCHE, PEDERSEN

Posted By: Mark Christian
Date: 12/24/2007 at 21:17:34

The Story County Herald, Story City, Story County, Iowa, Wednesday January 25, 2006.

Irene Judith Tweet, 94, died Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2006 at Bethany Manor. Services were held Saturday, Jan. 21 at 11 a.m. at Bethany Manor Chapel. Burial was at the Radcliffe Cemetery in Radcliffe, Iowa.

Irene Judith Tweet was born on Dec. 15, 1911 at Radcliffe, Iowa, the first child of Thomas B. and Jane (Heng) Tweet. She was baptized and confirmed at Our Savior's Lutheran Church. She graduated from Radcliffe High School in 1929 and, after one year at Waldorf College, returned home at the onset of the great depression to take up work as housekeeper for the town banker. Some years later, after two years of training, Irene graduated from the Lutheran Deaconess Hospital School of Nursing in Chicago, Illinois in 1941. She worked briefly as a Registered Nurse at Mason City, Iowa, and then enlisted in the Women's Army Corps (WACS) at the beginning of WWII. She served at Fort Des Moines (Iowa), but contracted tuberculosis and spent a year in quarantine and treatment at Army hospitals in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Denver, Colorado,. As a result of her subsequent medical discharge, Irene was eligible later to receive a
military disability pension.

For 10-15 years following her medical discharge, Irene worked as a private nurse in the Ames-Des Moines area with stints of hospital nursing in California and Chicago. From 195153, she was school nurse at Canton Academy in Canton, South Dakota. Her move from Iowa to Chicago began in 1957 with the death of her brother-in-law, John Frosland, Emma's husband. From that point, the sisters began living together as they took on the care of their aging parents. For 15 years, from 1961 until her retirement in 1976, Irene was Head of the Nursery Department working with newborn babies at Lutheran Deaconess Hospital in Chicago.

In 1982 Irene and Emma had a home built in Story City and retired back to Iowa. They became active members of Immanuel Lutheran Church and active volunteers at Bethany Manor until Irene herself became a resident in March of 2000.

Irene was a quiet and reserved person, dependable, and loved by all who knew her. Her nieces and nephews appreciate that she was quietly interested in and supportive of their lives in many ways. In her lifetime, she was able to travel extensively throughout the U.S. and Canada and she made trips overseas – to Norway with her sister, Emma, and to Taiwan with her half-sister, Louisa Buche, when Emma was serving as interim nurse at several mission stations there.

Irene is preceded in death by her older half-sister Louise Buche, by her brother Kenneth, and by her sister Thelma (Mrs. Charles) Pedersen. She is survived by her sister Emma Frosland of Story City, by her brother Arthur (Rosella) of Salem, Oregon, her brother-in-law, Charles Pedersen of Billings, Montana, and by many nieces and nephews and their families.