Memorial services for Dorothy May (Larson) Herstrom of Minneapolis, MN, were held at 11 a.m. Wednesday, June 19, 2019 at the Washburn McReavy Funeral Home on 50th and Vernon in Edina, MN. Visitation was held one hour prior to the service. Private family interment will be held later that day in Ellendale, MN.
Dorothy died Thursday, June 13, 2019 in Minneapolis, MN. She was 97 years of age.
Dorothy was born May 7, 1922 in Albert Lea, MN, the daughter of George and Hannah (Lageson) Larson. She attended public school in Albert Lea until about the age of 14 when her parents moved to Bath, MN. Her parents owned the Bath grocery store and ran the chicken shack as well where many a night they would show outdoor movies and sell fried chicken. She graduated high school and went onto nursing school at Saint Mary’s School of Nursing at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. She graduated nursing school July 1, 1943 and worked briefly as the head nurse at Saint Mary’s Mayo Clinic before heading to Galveston, TX in March 1944 where she served in the WWII Cadet Nursing Corp. The purpose was to help alleviate the nursing shortage which existed during World War II.
Life magazine (January 2,4 1944) touted the CNC as a way to serve the country in a war job with a future. The ad said that young women who could qualify as a Cadet Nurse were lucky girls, eligible for free training with pay, room and board, and gray uniforms with gray berets. The uniforms were described as one for summer and one for winter, which you'll wear with pride. Applicants were assured they could wear something frilly and feminine instead of uniforms for dances, and they would have time for dating, and that many schools allowed students to marry.
By 1945, Cadet Nurses were providing 80% of the nursing care in U.S. hospitals.
There she met her husband, Marshall J. Chapin who was in the Navy and likely waiting to ship out when they met. They were married on May 2, 1946. They moved back to Rochester, MN and had two children, Patricia Lee (Thomas Steele) Chapin in 1947 and Marsha Kay (Simmie Hinton) Chapin in 1952. Marshall died in 1955 and Dorothy remarried on April 6, 1962 to Howard Wayne Herstrom. They had one child, Mark Wayne (Barbara Brink) Herstrom in 1964. In 1967, she began working as a registered nurse at the University of Minnesota Heart Hospital and retired from nursing in 1987. Several of the pastimes Dorothy enjoyed included knitting, sewing, cooking, cross county skiing, snow shoeing, swimming and bowling. She also loved CHOCOLATE! Dorothy was blessed with 7 grandchildren, Melissa Ann Hinton, Kimberly Renee Hinton, Mitchell Louis Hinton, Vanessa Marie Hinton, Richard “Rick” Steele, Greta May Herstrom, Hayden Howard Herstrom, and 6 great grand children, Nathanael Melanson, Daniel Hinton, Matthew Hunn, Joshua Hunn, Joseph “Joey” Hinton, Paul Jarrett “P.J.” Hinton. She passed away peacefully on June 13, 2019 after a brief illness.
In lieu of flowers: memorial donations preferred to the American Heart Association.