| Parents:
Education: Occupation: Marriage: |
Raymond James Greenwood Anabelle Iola Brockman St. John's Academy, Jamestown, ND College of St. Catherine, St. Paul, MN Graduated 1963 BA in English and Education and a minor in Latin MA in Educational Administration Michigan State University, 1982 Teacher Edward Adriaan Spaans Church of St. James, Jamestown, ND By Rev. Allan F. Nilles August 22, 1964 Witnesses were Raymond J. Greenwood and Alida Spaans |
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| Children: | Edward (Attie) | Aug. 3, 1966 | † Aug. 26, 1983 |
| Gretchen Brockman | Sept. 21, 1968 | ||
| Amy Elizabeth | Feb. 5, 1971 |
| Notes: | Martha Elizabeth was born in Jamestown, ND. She graduated from St. John's Academy in 1954 and entered the |
| community of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet, St. Paul, MN that September.
She attended the College of St. Catherine and taught at Nativity, St. Mary's, and St. Therese in
St. Paul and at the Basilica in Minneapolis, MN. In January, 1963 she left the community and lived
with Gretchen and Tom Weber, Liz and Katie in Ames IA and taught at St. Cecilia's there. After
the school year she worked at Fides Press, Notre Dame, IN, took classes at the University of Notre
Dame and taught at Muessel Middle School in South Bend. She got her BA degree in English and
Education with a minor in Latin from CSC in 1963. She was engaged and returned to Jamestown in
1964 to marry Edward Spaans, a doctoral candidate in mathematics at Carnegie Institute of
Technology. They lived in Pittsburgh, PA. for Ed's final year of math at Carnegie while Martha taught
at Sacred Heart, Pittsburgh.
In 1965, after a summer in Europe and a little trip to Africa, they settled in New Jersey where Ed was hired by RCA to work in the aero-space industry. Three children, Attie, Gretchen and Amy, were born in Mount Holly, NJ. while the family home was in Cinnaminson, NJ. All three children attended the Infanta Montessori School and Martha worked there. At night she taught English as a Second Language at Camden and Cherry Hill, New Jersey and took classes at Glassboro State University. In 1974, after an RCA layoff, Ed accepted a job with Lear Siegler, Inc. in Grand Rapids, MI, also in aero space. The family sold their home in NJ, bought another in MI and followed Ed to East Grand Rapids where they have lived for the past 29 years. Martha immediately got a full time job with Grand Rapids Public Schools teaching English as a Second Language to adults in Community Education. In 1982 she earned a Masters Degree from Michigan State University in Educational Administration. She taught and/or coordinated the ESL programs in Grand Rapids for 23 years. The summer of 1984 she had the opportunity to teach English at Beijing University to the senior faculty, and after teaching, to travel extensively through China with Chinese guides from the University. She was invited to return to teach full time. She planned to return only for a summer, when the incident at Tien An Minh Square erupted. The family flew to Greece instead. Martha retired from teaching full time in 1996, but continued teaching classes for a few more years, then tutored individual students as needed. Since retirement, Martha and Ed Spaans, Gretchen and Tom Weber enjoyed two three-week trips to Russia. One year to Dubna, two hours by car from Moscow, and another year to St. Petersburg where they stayed, an easy walk from Catherine the Great's Summer Palace in Pushkin, a suburb of St. Petersburg. Webers and Spaans will take another trip this summer, 2003, to Moscow, a train ride to Samara and then a Volga River cruise between Samara and Stalingrad, and back to Moscow. A few years ago, in springtime, the same foursome flew to Istanbul and drove far South East to the interior of Turkey, into the land of caves, carpets, camels, caravans and censorious people. They plan to enjoy as much of the world as they can, together while they can all still walk, talk and focus cameras. They are all in reasonably good health. Thank God. |
| Ancestry: | The Balder Line |
| The Greenwood Line | |
| The Franz Kampa Line |
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