Collection PNMSS/I-11 - Katie Yoder Lind Papers

Lind, Katie Yoder, 1913-2001: Sister Katie Yoder Lind, beloved mother of Mary Ellen, Gerald and Loren, and wife of the deceased brother Marcus F. Lind, was born on July 8, 1913, about seven miles north of Wellman, Iowa. She was the oldest of three children born to Christian J. and Mary E. (Miller) Yoder. Her brothers are Harold, who is in attendance here, and Curtis, recently deceased.

Katie's family lived in Oregon near Albany from 1926 to 1928, where Katie completed the eighth grade. The family then returned to the Iowa farm of her grandparents, which was home to Katie until she married.

As a young women, she worked as a child-care worker at the Children's Home in Kansas City, and at the Mennonite Mission in Hannibal, Missouri. In 1941 she graduated from the two-year Christian Workers' Course at Hesston [Kansas] College and Bible School, and remained the next two years as matron in the girl's dormitory.

She received her B.A. in Bible from Eastern Mennonite College at Harrisonburg, Virginia, in 1949. Except for a year's leave of absence when Katie and her mother lived in Kansas, [when] Katie worked at the Halstead Hospital, she taught at Iowa Mennonite School near her home.

She married Marcus Lind in June 1965, and moved with him to their home near Salem, Oregon, and assisted in his duties as a pastor and a teacher at Western Mennonite Church and School. She dedicated herself to the loving care of her youngest son, Gerald, and his special needs, encouraging his naturally outgoing way of relating to people, and continued with this support for the rest of her life.

A writer and author, she researched and wrote "From Hazelbrush to Cornfields," a history of the early Amish-Mennonite settlement of southeastern Iowa published in 1994. She also completed a cookbook of early Mennonite recipes including stories, yet to be published, and began a work on the life of her son Gerald.

Katie grew up in the West Union Mennonite Church, where her grandfather was bishop and her father a minister. She was a member of the Ballston Mennonite Fellowship with her husband during the 1980s and 90s and also attended Sheridan Mennonite Church until the time of her death. They moved with Gerald to the Rock of Ages Valley-View Retirement community in 1989.

Katie died peacefully at her Valley-View home at the age of 88 after a brief illness with cancer, on Tuesday, August 14 [2001]. She is survived by her three children, five grandchildren, her brother Harold of Kalona, Iowa, and seven nieces and nephews.