Biography/Notes

Grace was the oldest of five children born to Paul and Anna Margaret Dornbirer. She was baptized the day the Dola, Ohio Lutheran Church was dedicated. This was her father's first pastorate and first experience in building a new church.

Throughout her childhood, all the things she was encouraged to do seemed to be leading to a full time service in the church. When she was a teenager, she wanted to marry a minister. She was taken by her father to church council meetings and remembers sitting on the roll top desk. She was encouraged, under her father's tutulage, to teach a class at the age of fourteen with her father correcting every mistake she made. She played the organ for the church services when the organist was ill and even played for the German services her father held even though she didn't understand them. Since her mother didn't speak German, none was spoken in their home.

Grace was sent to a neighboring town's high school because the local Latin teacher had no certificate and the family wanted Grace to have a good Latin foundation. She was active in the 4H Club, took music lessons, and was exposed to the working world at an early age.

Two members of her father's congregation financed the construction of a chicken hatchery near their parsonage in order to enable her father to supplement his income in order to send his family to college.

In her last year of high school, she was sent to the Academy at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio and worked as a maid in the summer to the family with whom she was to live and work with during the school year. The relationship didn't work out and another family with two small girls was found. Grace fed and dressed the girls and walked them a mile to Sunday school and church each Sunday.

Upon college graduation from Capital University, she was offered a job teaching at Cleveland High School by a member of her father's congregation who was superintendent. The position was teaching in the home economics department and Grace had been trained in English and math. She wrote the superintendent with this information, and he wrote back "I know of your fine record in the 4H Club and your work for your room and board. Here is a contract for $1,500.00, please sign and return at once." She did and it was renewed with a $150.00 raise the next year.

Grace's future husband had accepted an assignment at St. Peters Lutheran Church in Spokane, Washington, so they were married in June 1929 and moved to Spokane in July. During her years as a pastor's wife, she served in every possible capacity a pastor's wife could. She conducted a private kindergarten in her home, took over the church nursery class and Sunday school, and accompanied the choir on an old pump organ. During the Depression, she baked cookies and made coffee every week for the choir in order to have them enjoy some fellowship and help build the morale. There were conflicts, but she was growing in faith and service.

Grace and Leonard raised two children [Paul and Margaret], and Grace taught Sunday school almost continually for forty years. She organized the first Women's Missionary Group in Spokane, was Chairman of the Junior Department of the Women's Missionary Society, and was President of the Women's Missionary Federation of the Portland group. From 1950 to 1961, she worked with the Department of the National body of Women's Missionary Federation when the American Lutheran Church came into existence. Her most difficult thing to give up on retirement was her Sunday school class and Junior Choir. She feels the joyous experiences she had during her lifetime of church work are many fold and she feels "God loves me and has blessed me these eighty years and I love Him and may He be praised and glorified."

Grace is truly a remarkable person. Through adversity, she has persevered to give the gift of love to all who surround her. Much of the Dornbirer family information was compiled by Grace and published in 1986 as the "Family Tree of the Ludwig Kutz and Julius Wiese Families."

Children of Leonard and Grace (Dornbirer) Kutz:

1. Margaret Pauline (b 8 Apr 1931 Spokane Wa, d 30 Jun 1970), married 17 Aug 1952 to Robert A. Nistad
2. Paul Leonard (b 14 Aug 1936), married 1964 to Margaret Wu