Nurse took meals to shut-ins

3/20/2003

FINDLAY - Gertrude Myers, a retired nurse and business partner who delivered meals to shut-ins until a year ago, died Tuesday of congestive heart failure in the Heritage Manor nursing home. She was 92.

Mrs. Myers became a nurse at Fremont Memorial Hospital in the early 1930s shortly after completing her training at the former Mary Miller School of Nursing in Fremont.

“Nursing was her first love - working with people,” said Carol Klohn, her daughter.

But in the late 1940s, her husband, John Myers, and her brother, Albert Hainen, decided to start a candy-making business that made hand-dipped chocolates, peanut brittle, and other sweets sold by small markets throughout northwest Ohio, her daughter said.

Mrs. Myers left nursing to keep the books, order ingredients, and help package candy for the Findlay Candy Co., a business that operated until the death of Mr. Myers in 1965.

Then Mrs. Myers returned to nursing for about 15 years at the Blanchard Valley Regional Health Center.

In retirement, she volunteered for Mobile Meals of Findlay for about 20 years, delivering meals once a week to the elderly, some of them younger than her.

Mrs. Myers also volunteered at the soup kitchen at the Salvation Army. For many years, she helped at blood drives sponsored by the Blanchard Valley Regional Health Center and the American Red Cross.

She was a member of St. Andrew United Methodist Church, where she had taught Sunday school for more than 50 years. She was a past president of United Methodist Women and a member of Rebecca Ruth Circle.

She was a reading tutor and provided nursing service at area migrant schools.

Surviving are her daughters, Linda Parker and Carol Klohn; brother, Albert Hainen; five grandchildren, five great-grandchildren; a step-great-grandchild, and a step-great-great-grandchild.

Services will be at 11 a.m. tomorrow in the Coldren-Crates Funeral Home, where the body will be after 2 p.m. today.

The family requests tributes to St. Andrew United Methodist Church, Hospice of Northwest Ohio in Perrysburg Township, or to a charity of the donor's choice.