Mother-Daughter Graduate From Same School and Both Now Engaged in War Work
Marengo, Ia. -- Mrs. Idella B. Kane Dower, R.N., and daughter Ensign Margaret Dower, R.N., have the distinction of graduating from the same school - Mercy hospital, Davenport. The daughter graduated just 34 years after the mother and now they are both on active duty.
Mrs. Dower graduated from Mercy hospital in 1907. Soon after she was married to Attorney J.M. Dower in 1909 and has lived in Marengo ever since.
As there was such a call for more nurses, Mrs. Dower felt the urgency of the call. Attorney Dower died in October, 1942, and Mrs. Dower, heeding the war plea for nurses, returned to her alma mater and took a refresher's course in December and now has her license to practice.
Ensign Dower is a graduate of the Marengo high school and from Mercy hospital in 1941. She is now a navy nurse located in the U.S. Navy hospital, Oakland, Calif.
Other members of the Dower family active in war work are: Mrs Elizabeth Dower Palmer, secretary at the Rock Island arsenal; Robert Kane Dower, an attorney in Chicago, who is now in the navy, and James W. Dower, an attorney, who is with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Birmingham, Ala.
Source: The Quad City Times, April 9, 1943 (photo included of mother & daughter)
PROMOTED
Ensign Margaret M. Dower, daughter of Mrs. J.M. Dower of Marengo and the late Attorney J.M. Dower, has been promoted to the rank of lieutenant grade in the navy nurse corps at Long Island, N.Y. Lieut. Dower, a graduate of the Mercy hospital school of nursing in 1941, was the first stationed at the U.S. naval hospital in Oakland, Calif. She has two brothers in the service, Lieut. Robert Kane Dower, former Chicago attorney who is somewhere overseas and Ensign James W. Dower in Iwo Jima. Before entering the service Ensign [James W. Dower] was connected with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Source: The Quad City Times, April 1, 1945 (photo included)
SCOTT CO. NAVAL NURSES SERVING ABOARD SHIP
Lieut (j.g.) Margaret M. Dower, daughter of Mrs. J.M. Dower of Marengo, and Lieut. (j.g.) Theresa B. Walsh, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Walsh of Riverside, both navy nurses are now serving in the medical department aboard the U.S.S. Repose, one of a class of six new hospital ships completed at New York. Lieuts. Dower and Walsh are 1941 graduates of Mercy hospital.
Mrs. Dower, accompanied by another daughter, Mrs. R.W. Palmer, 3211 Keota avenue, recently returned from New York where she was present at the commissioning of the ship.
Two sons of Mrs. Dower are also serving in the navy. Lieut. Robert K. Dower is stationed at Washington, D.C., and Ensign James Dower is now on a 30-day survivor's leave. Ensign Dower was a gunnery officer on an LCS (L) operating north of Okinawa when it was hit by a Jap suicide plane. The vessel was sunk but Dower was rescued.
Source: The Quad City Times, June 24, 1945
