Wayne Soper Brown van Deest

Our wonderful father, Wayne Soper Brown van Deest was teaching in Danbury Iowa when Pearl Harbor happened. He was drafted and sent to the University of Southern California in Los Angeles for training. He met our beloved mother Corrie Risbrudt when she was volunteering at a USO dance at the Hollywood Canteen while she was working for the Neurology Department at USC General Hospital. Beloved dad was sent to Casablanca and Morocco for the North African campaign and then to Italy landing at Anzio. He was a sergeant with the Signal Corps as they pursued the Axis up the boot of Italy until the Nazis surrendered in Berlin. He was on a destroyer on the way to Japan, when just as they had reached the Rock of Gibraltar, the Japanese surrendered. Beloved dad and mom were married on September 22nd, 1945 at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis Minnesota. Dad was going on to graduate school at the University of Minnesota, when he was offered a teaching position in Newhall Iowa for a year. He then was hired as a social studies speech teacher and tennis coach at Cedar Rapids Theodore Roosevelt High School. Dad was instrumental in getting wrestling started in Cedar Rapids and Iowa and became Theodore Roosevelt’s head wrestling coach as well as tennis coach. When Theodore Roosevelt converted back to a junior high, dad was offered the assistant and then principal position of which he retired after 34 years.