Mary E. Mann
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Mary E Mann was a nursing school graduate from Indiana University. She went on to Northwestern University for graduate studies in Chicago. Having met before the Korean War, and corresponded during his service, Mary married Dennis K Mann at the Evangelical United Brethren Church in Chicago. While supporting her husband through veterinary school at the University of Illinois, she started a family, ultimately raising four children. She followed Dennis while he pursued his academic studies at Tulane University and then back again to the University of Illinois. Along the way, photos of her bacterial mutation experiments wound up on the cover of a December 1968 issue of Science Magazine. She had many interests and led several community groups — University of Iowa Newcomers Club, Gourmet Club, Methodist Circle meetings, League of Women Voters, and later while in Centralia a member of the Willow Grove school board, a member of the Centralia First Presbyterian Church as well as becoming a local historian publishing a history of Willow Grove School, the Presbyterian Church and a history of Centralia’s “King of the Hobosâ€.
Me & Hobo Bill: Recollections of a National Hobo King