Obit: Walker, Dorothy Mae (1936? – 2019)

Transcriber: stan@wiclarkcountyhistory.org

Surnames: Walker, Boardman

----Source: THORP COURIER (Thorp, Clark County, Wis.) 27 Mar 2019

Walker, Dorothy Mae (1936? – 17 DEC 2019)

Dorothy Mae Walker (Boardman) passed away unexpectedly, but peacefully at her apartment in San Francisco on December 17, 2018. Born on May 18, 1936, in Thorp, WI, she was the youngest of 11 children born to Grace Mae (Christian) Boardman, and Melvin C. Boardman, Jr. (iFrenchiei).

She was preceded in death by her siblings: Ruth Mae, Earl Ephraim, Lawrence Louis, Helen, Donald, Melvin Jack (Jack), Owen William (Bill), Daisy Eleanore, and Francis Roger (Roger). Shortly after Dorothy's passing, the last of her siblings, Cora Grace, passed away ending that generation of the Boardman family.

After graduating from Thorp high school in 1954, she completed one semester at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and then transferred to the Milwaukee County School of Nursing, and completed a three-year program receiving a diploma as a Registered Nurse. Later in her career she completed the program at the UCSF School of Nursing Pediatric Nurse Practitioner Program (PNP), and was one of the first of her kind in the USA. She worked briefly as a nurse at Milwaukee General Hospital, and thereafter spent 18 months at the Kaiser Hospital in Honolulu as a float nurse then as Head Nurse of that Emergency Department. She made her way to San Francisco working at UCSF as a staff - nurse, in coronary care, as a surgical scrub nurse and general nursing. Eventually she practiced nursing at UCSF Ambulatory Care in Pediatrics, where she became the Head Nurse of the Pediatric Clinic. As noted above, she enrolled and completed the USCF Nurse Practitioner Program, and ^ returned to the same clinic as both Head Nurse and PNP. She further advanced the quality of care at the inpatient New Born Nursery, where she founded and developed the Nurse Practitioner role in neonatal and pediatric care. She served on, and chaired, many medical nursing committees, and ultimately retired from the UCSF Department of Nursing.

As a young nurse in San Francisco, she met and married the love of her life, Joe Walker, who passed away only very short time after they married. They had no children. She never remarried.

There were no brakes on Dorothy's directive to live life to the fullest. She traveled the world well into her later years, became an avid golfer, volunteered as an usher for the San Francisco Opera, Symphony and Ballet, and was a volunteer for the De Young and Legion of Honor Museums, and at the SF Botanical Gardens for most of the many decades that she lived in SF. She demonstrated her historical knowledge of San Francisco as a docent for the Haas-Lilienthal House. She was a skilled bridge player, and was a member of the Asian-American Bridge Club until the time of her death. The ultimate demonstration o her enthusiasm for life in San Francisco was as a long-tinr season ticket holder of the San Francisco Giants, of which she rarely missed a game and enjoyed the view from her box seat directly behind home plate.

After this long story, the short story is that Dorothy was a strong, self-reliant, smart and enthusiastic woman, who contributed much to the world of nursing on many levels. She loved San Francisco, contributed broadly to her community, and enjoyed every moment of her life, and everyone who met her could only say that they admired, respected, and loved her for the tremendous person that she had become.

A memorial and celebration of her life will be held on Friday, April 12, 2019, at 10:00 a.m. at the San Francisco1" Columbarium and Funeral Home at 1 Loraine Court, San Francisco, CA 94118. Donations can be made in her memory to: The Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired (EIN 9401415317), The Salvation Army (EIN 58- 0660607), and/or La Casa De Las Madres (EIN 94- 2330864).