Geraldine "Geri" Theresa Dann

Geraldine (Geri) Theresa Dann Milwaukee – (nee Zimny) Unexpectedly and suddenly expired in the loving arms of her daughter, Darlene M. Dann, midday on January 5, 2021. The first CPR was successful. Though she looked at me, her eyes, through a tear, had a far-off depth and an increasingly bright pinpoint. Experienced as chaplain, I knew this wasn’t in my hands. While she responded, I performed Catholic last rites with anointing of oil and holy water. I said, “I love you!” She said the same. The second CPR failed. God’s will was stronger. Never did I think my Divinity Masters would provide the knowledge to properly deliver my Mom to Heaven – my final gift. She is with God in eternal life. My Mom was born January 23, 1930, at home, at 7:50 am, due to a 10” Milwaukee snowstorm to Casimir and Joanna (Jenny) Zimny. Her childhood church and grade school was St. Hyacinth. She was a proud graduate of Mercy High School. She loved being a majorette for them and running the switchboard. During high school, she worked downtown for Gimbels-Schuster in Better Dresses. She did so well in school that they recommended her to a firm and she started work at Heil Company/Galland-Henning the Monday after graduation as an executive secretary. She enjoyed working for her boss, Mr. Nunnemacher. She was an excellent bowler, played in the company’s league, and went on sailing excursions with her co-workers and the bosses on Lake Michigan. My Mom was an excellent actress and starred in over 25 productions of the St. Hyacinth’s Dramatic Club. She also borrowed her family’s furniture for props! She also had an outstanding singing voice. Many of her contemporaries thought she could have made a career of acting and singing if money and connections had been available. Her mother’s cousin, Lizbeth Scott, did become quite successfully in the movies, even starring with Ronald Reagan. My Mom loved knitting and sewing. She sewed curtains and made many of my clothes when I was young, knitted beautiful things, including 50 samplers of every knitting design technique joined together as an afghan and knitted clothes for my stuffed animals and dolls without needing any pattern! She met the love of her life at a picnic and married soon after on November 11, 1952 to Stanley J. Dann, thirteen years her senior, a former Army Master Sergeant (5 years) who had enlisted before Pearl Harbor and fought in the Pacific in WWII in major battles, notably Midway and Guadalcanal. Stanley was General Manager and made Vice-President (just months before his death) at Milwaukee Truck Center. Unfortunately, our happy Camelot life, as my family called it, was cut short by his unexpected and early death from a massive heart attack on May 19, 1973, alone, at our cottage on Shishebogama Lake, 7 ½ miles outside of Minocqua. Stan had malaria during the war, which may have compromised his heart. Stan had been devastated that on his beloved birthday, JFK’s assassination took place, ending the Kennedy’s Camelot. Ironically, Jackie died on the same day as Stan, years later. My Mom, having grown up in the Great Depression, knew how to navigate through hard times. Her father had lost his job at International Harvester. Her mother eventually secured a job as a full-fashioned topper for silk stockings at Phoenix Hosiery. Her father had to become a “1930’s Mr. Mom.” He was an excellent carpenter and repairman. He made clothes, toys and dolls for my Mom and her older Sister by five years. He repaired and made some shoes, cooked for them and kept house. My Mom would go with her father, with their Radio Flyer red wagon to stand in lines for bread, butter, cheese and vouchers for a ration of meat. Ironically, years later, she would work in the building where they stood in those lines. During the war years, my Mom and her mother would go with a well-to-do neighbor to church very late at night. The churches held masses at many times to accommodate the massive workforce supplying our military. She loved driving in her car that had side bud vases always filled with fresh flowers. My Mom wanted to volunteer for the USO, but she was too young. When my father died and widow’s benefits ended, my Mom went to work for Alverno College in the Registrar’s Office. She needed a higher-paying position, so she went to work for Superior Hoist and Crane as office manager and executive secretary, until they went out of business. Next, she became an office assistant and secretary for Hunt Company until they moved to Pewaukee. It was too far to go with her aging, beloved “Old Betsy,” a 1981 bronze Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme with mag wheels. My Mom worked very hard to keep a household going and bring me up with a very modest income. She maintained the beautiful ranch-style home that her husband had paid off in 1 ½ years, sent me through St. Mary’s Academy and two college degrees and paid incidentals for my Seminary Master’s Degree. She did all the yard work, with my help and even helped the neighbors with snowblowing and driving their children around. My Mom supported me in all my endeavors and was extremely proud, as my father had been, of my academic heights of attainment and my poetry and art achievements and awards. She did remark jovially one day, after the 3’x 4’ painting I brought home from the art exhibit, “It’s beautiful, but could you make them smaller, we are running out of wall space! We are not a gallery!” She even survived me setting up my oils and finishing a painting in the kitchen, amidst her cooking. My Mom participated in events at all my schools and was very much loved by my friends and teachers/professors there and when everyone came over to my house. She was a great room mother in grade school. My Mom and my Dad as well, were two outstanding, talented people. They were strong and resilient. They were so generous to others, helping with projects, giving them things that they needed and much more. They truly lived the Christian/Catholic values they believed in. When they gave of their talent and time, it was not time leftover after they finished what they were doing. They made time, setting aside their own things, for that is true giving from the heart. I could not have been prouder and gladder to have been born to two such great parents. We were always members of Blessed Sacrament, but for a brief time, Mom and I were at St. Rita’s in West Allis. We both were looking forward to her 91st birthday. She wanted to go back to The Brass Key, a very fine restaurant, where I and my friend Mark took her on her 90th, just before the Corona virus hit. I had ordered a beautiful custom-made cake for her. It was a joyous celebration. However, as all good things must end, she celebrates in Heaven with all those that have gone before us, and with her patron saint, St. Thérèse of Lisieux, enjoying a deserved eternal rest from all her labors and peace away from this crazed world now. Geraldine was preceded in death by her parents and her only sister, Phyllis (Norbert) Winski and Stanley’s only sister Florence (Florian) Putlak (Larry’s Shoe Shoppe and Rite Realty) and her dearest friend Mrs. Alice Drust. Geri was aunt to Nadine Putlak Prawdzik (Tom) Lehr (Bruce) and her Goddaughter Janice Winski Walder(Dennis) and Gerald Winski. Geri was great aunt to the Prawdzik girls: Cheryl (Ken) Laduron, Jennifer (Mike) Cincotta and Lori (Joe) Fote and to Heather Walder and great-great aunt to their children. She is survived by many cousins of the Latus and Zimny families and was especially proud of Fr. Tom Wojciechowski, O.F.M. Also surviving her are many friends and neighbors, especially neighbor Saset Selemovic as well as Helen Rutkowski, Mrs. Karen Streich, Mrs. Helen Weisenburg and Rev. Denis Weis. Her daughter’s college friends from UWM, Alverno and Sacred Heart School of Theology and Monastery considered her a second Mom: Mark Mickelson, Karl Curda, and Linda Gatton who called her “Mother Dann,” as well as a fellow seminary colleague, now Fr. Michael Flanagan. A special thank you goes out to Mark and Karl for all their support, care, advice, help and understanding during this traumatic time and Professor John Gallam for all his support, help, care and concern throughout all these years. I would also like to thank Chris Heger for all his concern, care, support and help for my Mom and I and for all the happy surprises he would bring to make our life better. My Mom really enjoyed them. Another very special thank you goes to a most excellent funeral director, Mr. Steve Sanders, for his understanding, patience with all the delays (I underwent three surgeries in two months in the middle of all this.), compassion, time, advice and help. But most of all, the greatest heartfelt thank you is bestowed upon our most special, cherished family friend, Auxiliary Bishop of Milwaukee, The Most Reverend James T. Schuerman for all he has done and his outstanding understanding, support, care, and compassion now and before, My Mom, in spirit thanks him also, especially for officiating at the Mass, the Vigil and the Cemetery Committal. There are many others who in many ways have made my journey during this time more bearable, too numerous to mention here. In gratitude I would also like to thank The Very Reverend Mark Payne, pastor of Blessed Sacrament, Mr. Sam Skogstad, Director of Music and Liturgy, Tom Adamski, Cantor and for others at my parish that have helped along the way. Simultaneously, Fr. Tom Wojciechowski (Queen of Peace Friary, Burlington, WI) and Fr. Michael Flanagan (St. Michael’s Parish, Paintsville, KY) will also be saying a mass in their respective parishes at Noon on Friday for Geraldine. The Visitation will take place on Wednesday, August 11, 2021, from 4:30 to 8:00pm with Vigil by Bishop Schuerman at 6:30 pm at MAX A. SASS & SONS FUNERAL HOME, 1515 W. Oklahoma Avenue. The Mass of Christian Burial will take place on Friday, August 13, 2021, at Noon, with visitation in church from 10:30 to 11:30 am at Blessed Sacrament Parish, 3100 S. 41st St. Milwaukee, with Bishop Schuerman officiating and at the Cemetery Committal which will be graveside at St. Adalbert’s Catholic Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, donations to Geraldine’s daughter would be greatly appreciated.