Surnames: Blecha, Decker, Vollrath, Metcalf, Dallman

Obituary of Elmira Blecha

Funeral services for Miss Elmira Blecha took place at 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, August 30, 1956, at the Zion Evangelical and Reformed church. Burial was in the Greenwood cemetery.

Miss Blecha died August 24, 1956 in Houston, Texas where she was director of the dietetic internship program at the Veterans Administration hospital -- a program she had organized at this new hospital. She died of cancer.

Officiating at the services was Rev. Albert Guthmiller. Pallbearers were her cousins; Donald, Elmer and Gary Speich, Edward Gerlach, Kenneth and Jerold Vollrath.

Elmira Emma Blecha, daughter of Frank and Bertha Vollrath Blecha, was born November 18, 1913, in Eaton township near Greenwood. She was confirmed in the Braun Settlement Evangelical and Reformed church. She graduated from Greenwood High School in 1931; Central State College, Stevens Point in 1935 and Wayne University, Detroit, where she received a master's degree in nutrition in 1937.

She was a member of the American Dietetic Association of which she headed the diet therapy section, the Texas and Houston Dietetic Association and the Houston Diabetes Association.

Her father died in 1918 and her mother in 1925. After the death of their mother, Elmira and her twin brothers Lee and Lynn, lived with James Metcalf. Her brother, Lee Blecha, was declared missing in action after the sinking of the U.S.S. Buck in 1942.

Survivors include her brother and sister-in-law, Capt and Mrs. Lynn Blecha and nieces Carolynn and Barbara, Bryn, Texas; her foster parents, Mr. and Mrs. James Metcalf, and her foster sisters and brothers, Mrs. Ben (Bertha) Dallman, LeRoy Metcalf, Dale Metcalf, Princeton, Wis. and Everett Metcalf, Brookings, S.D. Attending the funeral from out of (the rest of the copy is missing)