Verna Lathrop Kern’s life story began with birth on a small dairy farm near the village of Greenwood, Illinois on the first day of November 1927. As a farm girl, later living in Greenwood village, she was the younger (by six years) sister of one brother, parented by a skilled carpenter-cabinet maker and a mother who viewed life pessimistically A young high-school gym teacher left seeds of women’s worth within some of her students, and the athletically talented and able student, Verna, took that potential to heart. First of her extended family to propose going to college, her mother asked On what, buttons? Not fully on her own personal earnings (from work as bank teller, factory worker, employed student living in cooperative housing), she went off to the University of Illinois. A blind date in her sophomore year brought together the two who would share 66 years of their lives ending with her death in 2013. Always physically active tennis, sailing, biking, jogging; scholarlyhighest ranking in her college class; innovative created academic-advising program in her Iowa State University department; wife and mother two children, three grandchildren, all high achievers; care-giver to an aged mother who lived 300 miles away; herself a winner over five forms of cancer; lover, companion, and fellow-traveler/sometimes resident with Bob (the blind date) in far places on four continents and islands of the Pacific.
