When Lois graduated from Rock Island High School, it was a given that she would attend Augustana College since her father was a professor there, and one of his benefits was that his kids could receive free tuition at the college.  She dived into college life, joined a sorority and weathered quite well not only being the daughter of a professor but the daughter of the "Dean of Men".   Lois majored in English and began taking education courses to prepare to be a teacher, but by the end of her junior year she had shifted her interests to social work and knew that she wanted to go on for her Master's in this field.  "My years at Augie gave me a wonderful foundation for my life's work and I cherish the lifelong friendships which were formed during those years," she said.  

Louis received her Master's degree in social work from the University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration.   She loved Chicago, lived at the International House in Hyde Park, and did her field work at a community center on the north side of Chicago, which was located near to what was then the Cabrini Green housing project.  "This was an incredible learning experience for me and opened me to a wonderfully diverse world as well as to the negative impacts of poverty and racism in our society."

Her plan after finishing at the University of Chicago was to "see the world."  She decided to head for Boston, Massachusetts where she got a job with a child welfare agency called Boston Children's Service.  The agency was located on Beacon Hill right across the street from the Boston Commons, and she arrived about the same time as hundreds of hippies, flower children, and runaways that had decided to make the Boston Commons their home.   Her boss and lifelong mentor, Chuck Bates, encouraged her to reach out to the many vulnerable children they saw right outside of the front door of their agency, and so Lois became involved in working with these runaway kids.  She helped to support a free medical clinic, did a little street work with two Catholic nuns who eventually started a program for runaways called "The Bridge," and was the liaison with an organization called Project Place which operated a runaway house in the city.

It was through this work that Lois met her husband, Rich Gehrman.  He was a seminary student at Harvard and working at Project Place.  Rich's career took him into the government arena where one serves at the discretion of whoever is in office at the time, and so they began a journey down the East Coast.  They lived in White Plains, New York where their two daughters, Kristina and Emily, were born and then on to Baltimore Maryland.  

In 1990, after twenty years on the East coast, they moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, and this is their current home.  Lois is still working as a school social worker for a Charter School which serves Somali Immigrant children.  Rich is a human service consultant and is passionately involved in developing a nonprofit organization, Safe Passage for Children, to advocate for improving child welfare services for vulnerable children in Minnesota.

Their oldest daughter, Kristina, is just finishing her PH.D in philosophy at UCLA and has accepted a teaching position at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.  Their youngest, Emily, lives with her husband in Silver Spring, Maryland.  Emily works for a Minneapolis law firm that has a government relations office in DC.  She represents Minnesota cities and counties in Congress on transportation and infrastructure issues.

Rich and Lois both love being in the woods.  While living in Boston, they bought a piece of land in Vermont, and, after gathering several "how to," they cut down trees from their property and built a small log cabin.  Although it is far from their Minnesota home, they love the Vermont Mountains and plan to spend more time there once they have retired.

"We have also been blessed with a cabin on Lake of the Woods in Northwestern Ontario, Canada.  This is where my family would spend our summers as I was growing up," Lois says.  She plans to head up north shortly after school is out.  Their only neighbors on the island in Canada are Riley and Ulrika Brissman, who also have a summer place there.  (What are the odds?)

Lois' memories of her high school days include GAA, choir, school plays, and poetry reading.  Her favorite teacher was Miss Pete.  Most of all,  she remembers the group of girl friends who ate lunch together each day, the laughter, the support shared, and the tears shed at the tragic death of our friend Kathy Andrews.

She sends her best wishes to all of her classmates.