Dorothy Berry

Hawarden, IA: Dorothy Jane Miller Berry, 96, died Wednesday, January 6, 2016 at the Hillcrest Health Care Center in Hawarden, Iowa. Visitation with the family present will be 6:00-7:00 p.m. followed by a prayer service at 7:00 p.m. Friday, January 8, 2016 at the United Methodist Church in Hawarden. Her funeral service will be held 11:00 a.m., Saturday, January 9, 2016, also at the church with Rev. Barb Joy officiating. Burial will follow at Grace Hill Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, her family requests memorials be directed to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Condolences for the family may be left online at www.porterfuneralhomes.com.

Dorothy Miller Berry was born January 5, 1920 in Hawarden, Iowa. She graduated from Hawarden High School in 1936, and attended Wayne State College in Wayne, Nebraska, receiving her teaching certificate in 1938. She later received her bachelor's degree from Morningside College. She taught in Alton, Iowa, and then worked in Washington, D.C., during World War II for the Lend-Lease program, helping provide arms for the Russians. Towards the end of the war, she taught in Wapello, Iowa. After the war she returned to Sioux City to teach.

During the polio outbreak in the country, Dorothy was featured in a Sioux City Journal article describing how the school was using new technology -- an early form of distance education -- to teach students who stayed at home while they recovered from the disease.

She married Thomas W. Berry on December 27, 1950. She taught in several schools as her husband traveled around the country working as an electrician. They returned to Sioux City in the late 1950s, where she was a fifth grade teacher at Washington Elementary in Sioux City for many years.

Dorothy enjoyed reading, traveling, and doing needlepoint. She was a member of the United Methodist Church in Hawarden.

She was preceded in death by her parents, Jim and Hazel Miller; her husband, Thomas J. Berry; two brothers, Robert B. Miller and his wife, Ruth, and J. Quinten Miller; sister Alice Marie Kopp and brother-in-law Charles Kopp; and great-nephews James Utecht and Brad McFarland.

She is survived by one sister-in-law, Wanda Miller of Beresford, and many nieces and nephews.

Visitation

6:00 - 7:00 p.m. ,Friday, January 8, 2016
Hawarden United Methodist Church
803 13th Street Hawarden, Iowa 51023

Prayer Service

7:00 p.m. ,Friday, January 8, 2016
Hawarden United Methodist Church
803 13th Street Hawarden, Iowa 51023

Funeral Service

11:00 a.m. ,Saturday, January 9, 2016
Hawarden United Methodist Church
803 13th Street Hawarden, Iowa 51023