Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Marion YERKES
Marion J. Yerkes Lurz, 91, a nurse and World War II veteran formerly of Glenside, died of pancreatic cancer Dec. 20 at her son's home in Point Pleasant, N.J.
Mrs. Lurz graduated from Collegeville High School, where she played on the field hockey team. She then wanted to study art, but because of the Depression she decided to choose a more practical career in nursing, said her son, Thomas.
After graduating from the Abington Memorial Hospital School of Nursing, she worked in the hospital's emergency and operating rooms.
Mrs. Lurz enlisted in the Army Nursing Corps in January 1943, and served in station hospitals in North Africa, Italy, and France. In Italy, Mrs. Lurz cared for soldiers wounded in the Battle of Monte Cassino.
In 2007, she told an Inquirer reporter: "The Germans were holed up in a monastery on top of a hill. The soldiers were sent up, and they were shot down. We got the patients. They were all beat up."
After the liberation of Rome in June 1944, Mrs. Lurz and other Army officers had an audience with the pope. Mrs. Lurz had a second audience with a pope in the 1980s when she was a private nurse and accompanied a patient to Rome.
After her discharge, Mrs. Lurz earned a bachelor's degree in nursing from Temple University under the GI Bill. She also earned a master's degree in education from Temple.
She was a nurse at Abington Memorial Hospital and a nursing director at the Lutheran Nursing Home in Germantown, Rydal Park in Rydal, and other retirement residences. For 10 years in the 1970s and 1980s, she taught a pre-nursing course at East Montgomery County Area Vocational Technical School in Willow Grove.
She had an adventuresome spirit, her son said. When she was in her 60s, she spent a summer as a nurse for the National Park Service on the north rim of the Grand Canyon. She also completed training to be a Peace Corps volunteer in Belize, but the program in that country closed, her son added.
While in North Africa during the war, she married an Army captain, William Kennedy. A prisoner of war made her wedding dress from bedsheets, her son said. She and Kennedy had a daughter before divorcing.
In 1950, she married Thomas A. Lurz, with whom she had three more children. He died in 1978.
An avid equestrian, she taught her children to ride English saddle, her son said.
Mrs. Lurz talked to schools and community groups about her World War II experience, her son said. She was an active member of the Bux-Mont Women Veterans Association and the Military Officers Association of America.
In addition to her son, she is survived by daughters Peggy Hervas and Clara, three grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. Daughter Marilyn Neslie died in 1980.
A memorial service will be held at 1:30 p.m. Feb. 6 at BuxMont Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 2040 Street Rd., Warrington, Pa. 18976, where Mrs. Lurz was a member for 40 years.
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