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DUNN, LOUISE ELIZABETH MCLEAN December 10, 1915 - March 5, 2014 Louise was born on Hull Farm, Monmouth County, New Jersey to Amzi Chapin and Laura Morford McLean. One of her earliest memories was the soldiers from Ft. Monmouth marching past her grandfather's house towards the end of WWI. The family later moved to Pennington, New Jersey where Louise grew up with one sister Anne McLean (Corson). They were the daughters of the county agricultural agent. In 1918 she survived the Spanish Flu but remained sickly for several years and was sent to the country each summer to live and recuperate with her Aunt and Uncle on their farm in Central New Jersey. She had an idyllic childhood with a close extended family. Despite the pay cut of 25% during the depression and with help from grandparents, Louise graduated from Cornell in 1937 with a degree in Home Economics. She subsequently did her hospital dietitian internship in Philadelphia and then worked for GE in Syracuse and Cleveland. She attended Columbia University for a summer in Manhattan. The year 1939 found her and her girlfriend changing their travel plans from a cruise on a British flagged ship to Bermuda to an American ship to Havana. While they were in Cuba, war was declared by England, and the crew painted the Stars and Stripes prominently on the sides of their ship for their return voyage. Louise married Thomas Monroe Dunn on August 1, 1942 in Columbia, S.C. where she was working as a civilian for the Army. Tommy was in the 12th Engineer Battalion. He proposed to her by telling all their friends that she had turned him down when actually he had never yet asked her. His sense of humor was one of the many things Louise loved about her Tommy. She then followed the Eighth Division to Tennessee, Arizona, and Missouri and returned to her home in New Jersey when his unit was shipped to Europe. Their first child, Jean Louise Dunn (Griffin), was born in Trenton, New Jersey on August 15, 1944. After the war the family moved to Idaho where Tommy completed his civil engineering studies at University of Idaho in Moscow on the GI Bill. They followed road, bridge, and dam construction projects moving to Rupert, Twin Falls, Burley, Salmon, and St. Anthony all in Idaho. Their son Thomas Jr. was born in Burley on August 9, 1950. The family then moved to Madison, Wisconsin; Ohio View Industry and Pittsburg, Pennsylvania; Washington, D. C.; and Dayton, Ohio. In Dayton, Louise went back to work after completing her Master's in Education from Miami of Ohio on a Carnegie-Mellon grant. She worked as a lunchroom superintendent at Trotwood-Madison Schools and did some consulting before retiring and moving to Heber Springs, Arkansas. Louise enjoyed cooking and sewing but her passions outside of the family were growing and showing daffodils, genealogy, and reading murder mysteries. She was a nationally certified daffodil judge, life member of the New England Genealogical Society and must have read all the murder books in five libraries. She attended her 70th college class reunion. After the death of her husband, Louise moved to Albuquerque to live near, and later with her daughter. She was active with the Senior Citizens group and maintained her hobbies and interests until her death. She left us gently after a short illness at Hospice. She was a wonderful mother, an accomplished woman, and a life-long student. She is survived by her sister; son and daughter; daughter-in-law; two grandsons; and two step grandsons and their families which include two great-grandchildren and two step-great-grandchildren. A celebration of her life will be held Saturday, June 21st at the Riverside Funeral Home Chapel at 6PM.
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