Sara Wolfe Wissing (1926–1998)
Sara Terese Wolfe was born on August 2, 1926, in Delmar, Iowa, the daughter of Raymond Bernard Wolfe and Gladys Elizabeth McGinn Wolfe. Her siblings were Mary Kathryn (b. 1929), Margery, and Thomas Anthony (b. 1940). Ray Wolfe was the grandson of Irish immigrants and farmed not quite 200 acres in Clinton County. He died in 1941.
Sara Wolfe attended Mount Saint Clair Academy, in Clinton, then Rosary College, in River Forest, Illinois, before receiving a BA from Marycrest College in Davenport. She earned a master’s degree in counseling from Western Illinois University, in Macomb, Illinois.
She married George Richard “Dick” Wissing, a lawyer from Sioux City, Iowa, on October 26, 1957, at Sacred Heart Cathedral, in Davenport. The couple had four children: Matthew Richard, Mary Elizabeth “Beth,” Catherine Constance “Kate,” and John Martin.
Sara Wissing worked as a social worker. She served as director of the Davenport office of Information Referral and Assistance Services and on the boards of the Vera French Mental Health Center, the Vera French Housing Center, the Center for Aging Services Inc., and the Independent Living Center, and as chair of the Iowa State Health Facilities. Late in her life she worked as the facilitator of the Single Parent–Displaced Homemaker program at Scott Community College, Eastern Iowa Community College District.
Sara Wolfe Wissing died on October 3, 1998, at Genesis Medical Center–West Campus, in Davenport. Her body was donated to the University of Iowa College of Medicine, in Iowa City, and then interred with her husband, who died on September 11, 2011, at Saint Patrick’s Cemetery, in Delmar, Iowa.
Top of the page: from the Plat Book of Clinton County (1894)
Selected Sources
Birth Certificate, 1926.
Obituary, Quad-City Times (Davenport, Iowa), October 6, 1998..
Wedding Announcement, The Daily Times (Davenport, Iowa), October 26, 1957.