Marion Manson Johanson 1914 - 2002

MANSON, JOHANSON, GARY

Posted By: Connie Swearingen-Volunteer (email)
Date: 5/18/2016 at 12:31:38

Sioux City Journal
8 April 2002

Marion Manson Johanson, 88, of Sioux City died Friday, April 5, 2002, at her daughter's residence following a brief illness.

Memorial services will be at a later date. Her body was donated to the University of Iowa. Burial of the cremains will be after they are returned from the university. Visitation with the body present will be 4 to 8 p.m. today, with family present 6 to 8 p.m. and a parish vigil service at 7 p.m., with the Rev. Gerald F. Feierfeil of Nativity Church officiating, all at Larkin Morningside Funeral Home.

Mrs. Johanson was born in Sioux City in January 1914, the daughter of John E. and Anna May (Gary) Manson. She lived most of her life in the Sioux City area. She graduated from Cathedral High School, attended two years of college at Briar Cliff and received a B.A. degree in music from Clarke College in Dubuque, Iowa, in 1936. She also obtained a master's in education degree from Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., in 1942. From 1936 through 1941, she worked as a high school teacher and principal in Minnesota, Nebraska and Iowa.

While working near Spencer, Iowa, she met her future husband, Allen. During World War II she joined the U.S. Navy as a WAVE and was assigned to Washington, D.C., working in communications and personnel. By the time the war was over, she had attained the rank of first lieutenant and had been transferred to Seattle, Wash. After Allen returned home from the South Pacific, they were married in Seattle in 1945. Both were discharged from the Navy in 1946 and moved to Sioux City.

She and Allen had four children. She worked at home until the youngest entered grade school. In 1960, she started her career at Briar Cliff College as alumni secretary, which evolved into director of publicity in 1963. She became director of public relations for the college in 1966, and held that position until her retirement in 1974.

She was always involved in Scouting, being the first Girl Scout in America to wear the newly revised uniforms introduced in 1928. She became an Eagle Scout herself and also was a den mother for the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts with her sons, and a troop leader for the Girl Scouts with her daughter.

She belonged to numerous church and civic societies in Sioux City, including the AAUW, Sioux City Business Women's Association, Friends of the Library, Sioux City Historical Society, Sioux City Community Health Board, Sioux City Women's Club, and Altar Societies at St. Boniface, Immaculate Conception and Nativity parishes.

After retirement, she and Allen traveled the world and visited their children and grandchildren throughout the United States. They also shared the hobby of rock hounding and often spent weekends digging up fossils and gems throughout the sand hills and gravel pits of the Midwest. Allen died in 1988. She moved from her Morningside home in 1999 to her daughter's home, also in Morningside, where she spent her last years surrounded by children and constant activity.

Survivors include three sons and their wives, Gary and Dottie of Timonium, Md., David and Patricia of Kelso, Wash., and Mark and Linda of Pembroke, N.H.; a daughter and her husband, Mary Kay and Robert Powell of Sioux City; nine grandchildren, Eric, Patrick, Jessica, Adrienne, Liv, Chad, Todd and his wife, Dawn, Matthew and Michael.

She also was preceded in death by two sisters in infancy.

Memorials in her name may be sent to Hospice of Siouxland.