Louise Irene (Duerksen) Koehn
Louise Irene (Duerksen) Koehn was born
May 26, 1921 near Inman, Kansas to David Rose Duerksen and Marie
Wiens Duerksen. She died August 31, 2021 in Health Care at the
Kidron-Bethel retirement community in North Newton, Kansas. She was
100 years old. Louise married Earl Dwain Koehn, originally from
Pawnee Rock, Kansas, in the Bethel College Mennonite Church in 1950.
Earl died in 2007. They designed and built a family home in North
Newton in 1953. They resided there until 1995, when they moved into
an apartment at Kidron-Bethel.
Louise and Earl have three sons. Dennis
lives in Chicago, Illinois; David in Fort Bragg, California; and
Brent in Elkhart, Indiana. She will also be missed by three
grandchildren: Rosabeth Koehn, St. Louis, Missouri; Emily Koehn,
Petaluma, California; and Timothy Koehn, Oakland, California. Louise
was preceded in death by her three younger sisters: Viola Ediger
(2015), Elda Duerksen (1953), and Darlene Goertz (2015).
For many years Louise was an active
member of the Bethel College Mennonite Church. She served as the
congregation's first female deacon. She also had a love of classical
music, being inspired by a grade school teacher. One of Louise's
roles in the Duerksen family was seamstress; she had a life-long love
of sewing.
Louise graduated from Bethel College in
1944 and returned to the college in 1947 to serve as Director of Food
Service. She fed thousands at the Mennonite World Conference hosted
by the college in 1947. Louise was a decisive administrator,
purchasing 400 wooden chairs at one dollar apiece for the college
dining hall from the Newton Ripley Hotel. In 1952 she resigned from
Bethel to devote herself to raising her sons. She became their chief
taxi driver using a Chevy station wagon. Around 1954 Louise
renegotiated parenting responsibilities with Earl. She joined a
home-economics club, a reading club, and a child-study club. In 1963
she began training to become a librarian. She served in that
profession at Walton Grade School for four years and then twenty-one
years at Bethel College, where she retired in 1986.
Louise and Earl enjoyed international
travel. They visited Japan, India, South America, Africa, and Europe.
Family vacations are a memorable part of the Koehn family history,
especially a six-week camping trip to Alaska in 1965. The family had
a Christmas vacation in Hawaii in 1985, where David was employed with
an insurance company. Louise and Earl spent time in their first
decade of retirement driving on road trips to visit family in
Indiana, California, and Texas. Earl and Louise celebrated their 50th
wedding anniversary with a family cruise off the west coast of Mexico
in 2000.
The memorial service for Louise Koehn
will be held Saturday 2021 October 16 at 1:30 p.m. at the Bethel
College Mennonite Church.
