Gertrude M. Spieckermann
1918-2012
Rock Port, Missouri

Gertrude Marie Spieckermann, daughter of August and Louise (Oswald) Spieckermann, was born September 23, 1918, in Bloomfield, Nebraska. She passed away on January 26, 2012, at the age of 93, while a resident at Pleasant View Nursing Home, Rock Port, Missouri.

When Gertrude was nine years old, her father, the pastor at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in Bloomfield, suddenly died an untimely death at the age of 52. Her mother was then encouraged to move back to Rock Port where the Oswald family thought they could be of more help to her and her three children. After moving to Rock Port, Gertrude completed her high school education and enrolled in Tarkio College for two years. She then was contracted to teach at Benton Center country school southwest of Langdon, Missouri, for the 1937 and 1938 school years. She also taught for a time in the Rock Port system while completing her degree and obtaining a life certificate to teach elementary classes in Missouri on July 1, 1943. So began the occupation that would later become a passion that would occupy many years of Gertrude’s working life.

As World War II was now in full swing with maximum war production required, Gertrude moved to Kansas City where she helped assemble airplane bomber parts. After the war was over, she moved back to Rock Port briefly before moving into Iowa. Details of the years spent in Iowa are sketchy to the remaining family, but it is known that she did some work while there that had to do with education, whether it was teaching or support staff work.

Later, while living in Des Moines doing clerical work for an insurance company, she noticed an ad in the Des Moines Register requesting applications from teachers living in the Midwest who might want to move to Oregon to help fill a teacher shortage there for much higher wages than were being paid in the Midwest. That application and acceptance by the Portland School District began a tenure that would see Gertrude accepting assignments ranging from third to the sixth grade. During her years there, she was commended on several occasions by building principals, the district superintendent, and later on the state level. Gertrude taught in Portland, for over twenty years, retiring in 1983.

After retirement, the decision was made to move back to Rock Port in 1984, to be near her sister, Louise Tiemeyer and family. After returning to Rock Port, she provided many enjoyable hours of conversation for family and friends. Before her health failed she attended First Lutheran Church, the successor church of First Evangelical Lutheran, which her father once pastored and where he met her mother, Louise Oswald.

She was preceded in death by her parents, August and Louise Spieckermann; her brother Herbert and his wife, Eva Jean and her sister Louise and her husband, John Tiemeyer. Survivors include three nephews and one niece: Jean and Steve Spieckermann, children of brother, Herbert and Eva Jean Spieckermann; Rich Tiemeyer and wife, Toni Messina, Columbia, Missouri; and Paul Tiemeyer and wife Karen, Rock Port, Missouri, both sons of sister, Louise Tiemeyer. She is also survived by two great-nephews, Matt Tiemeyer and his wife Shelly, their sons, Caelan and Will, of Shoreline, Washington, and Nathan Tiemeyer and his wife, Rachel, their sons, Jack and Ben and daughter Hannah, Columbia, Missouri.

Services:
2 p.m. Thursday, February 2, First Lutheran Church, Rock Port.
Interment: Greenhill Cemetery, Rock Port.
Open visitation begins at 9 a.m. Wednesday, February 1, at Minter Funeral Chapel, Rock Port, where the family will receive friends that evening from 7 to 8 p.m.
Memorials: Pleasant View Nursing Home, Rock Port or First Lutheran Church, Rock Port.
Online obituaries and condolences at www.minterfuneralchapels.com
Services: Minter Funeral Chapel, Rock Port.