Olive Josephine GJERSTAD

GJERSTAD, VORRE, LANE, ANDERSON, WAGNER

Posted By: Sarah Thorson Little (email)
Date: 3/21/2010 at 11:54:13

November 14, 1916 -- September 26, 1993

Olive Josephine Gjerstad, 76, Ames, died Sunday of heart failure at Northcrest Health Care Center on September 26, 1993. A funeral service will be at 10:30 a.m. Thursday at Bethesda Lutheran Church, with Rev. Dave Nerdig officiating. Burial will be at 2 p.m. Thursday at Union Cemetery, Humboldt.

Olive Gjerstad was born at Dayton Township, Wright County, on November 14, 1916 to Gerhard and Anna (Vorre) Gjerstad. She attended Eagle Grove High School, Waldorf College and Iowa State Teacher's College at Cedar Falls. She received a master's degree from the University of Chicago. She also had attended the University of Iowa and the University of Indiana. A lifelong teacher, she taught in Iowa from 1935 to 1945; with the National Lutheran Council from 1945 to 1946; at the American School in Venezuela from 1947 to 1951; with the National Lutheran Council again from 1952 to 1955; in Iowa from 1955 to 1961; and in Illinois from 1961 to 1982, when she retired and moved to Ames.

She is survived by three sisters, Alice Lane of Dakota City, Lucile Wagner of Eagle Grove, and Dorothy Anderson of Paton; and a brother, Earl Gjerstad of Dodge City, Kan. She was preceded in death by her brothers Robert and Harold and her
sister Marquerite.