Isabel Aufderheide (1917-2007) Obit

Isabel B. Aufderheide
[Reprinted from THE JOURNAL 17 October 2007, New Ulm www.nujournal.com]
Note: The same obiturary was published in the Star Trib, www.startrib/obituaries.com; photo reprinted from the Star Trib article..

Aufderheide, Isabel B., age 90, a retired professor of English at the Minnesota School of Business and longtime authority on English usage, died at her home in Edina early Monday October 15, 2007, after a brief illness.

Ms. Aufderheide, a 1939 graduate of Macalester College, taught at the Business School for 39 years, beginning shortly after WWII and retiring in 1985. During her tenure, she also served as a consulting expert to The Minneapolis Star-Journal in the 1950s and its reader-generated, question-and-answer feature concerning proper English usage.

After the business college was bought by the International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) Corporation, she was honored as the company’s Employee of the Year in 1976.She was also an avid and accomplished bridge player and aficionado of crossword puzzles, routinely solving The New York Times puzzles in ink. She was a long-time supporter of the Guthrie Theater and Minnesota Public Radio.

She was keenly interested in Asian culture and politics and was an early devotee of foreign student exchange programs. She had been scheduled to engage in such a sojourn in Japan just prior to the breakout of hostilities that led to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Her exchange was cancelled by the Japanese.

Isabel Aufderheide was born April 5, 1917, in the tiny southwestern Minnesota village of Wanda. She was the first of five children born to Gustav and Anna MacDougall Aufderheide. The family moved to a farm near Lamberton when Isabel was a baby, and she graduated valedictorian from Lamberton High School. In the interim, her mother died when Isabel was 10.

After graduation from Macalester College, Ms. Aufderheide was an English teacher at Pelican Rapids and Glenwood high schools. She left teaching during WWII to serve as the official hostess in charge of the social program and facilities at Sioux City Airbase, in Iowa. She moved to Minneapolis after the war to join the faculty at the business college.

Ms Aufderheide is survived by her sister, Jean A. Stark of Tullahoma, Tenn., and 13 nieces and nephews. Her other sister, Wilma, became vice-president at controller of what was then Dayton-Hudson’s department stores. Both of her brothers, John and Ernest, were veterans of WWII.

Funeral Service Saturday, October 20, 12 NOON at Lakewood Cemetery Chapel, 3600 Hennepin Ave. Mpls., with visitation a half hour prior. Interment Lakewood Cemetery. Memorials preferred to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.