Lasting Memories

Johanna H. Willemsen
Feb. 21, 1918-Feb. 25, 2012
Palo Alto, California

Johanna Willemsen passed away peacefully on Feb. 25, 2012, at Channing House in Palo Alto.

She will be dearly missed and lovingly remembered by her niece, Louise Murray, and Louise's life-partner, Liza Fiol-Matta; her nieces and nephew in Holland (Nicolien, Marijke, and Cees Meeuwse; Rie and Liesbeth Willemsen); her grandnephews, David and Olivier te Boekhorst, and his wife Jennifer Reck.

Johanna grew up in the Netherlands and worked as a nurse during World War II. After the war, Johanna worked for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in the DP camps in Germany, then was hired by the Jewish Agency as a nurse on the ships which relocated persons displaced by the war.

In the early 1950s she immigrated to the United States and later graduated from UCSF with a degree in public health nursing. Johanna touched the lives of many families during her years of service at PARCA in San Mateo, especially her loving friends of the Mothers Support Group she founded to help mothers of developmentally disabled children.

Her family thanks the nursing and residential staff at Channing House for their wonderful care and professional support. We will miss her deeply.