- Date Of Birth: February 2, 1926
- Date Of Death: February 2, 2020
- State: New Mexico
An enrolled member of the White Earth Nation of Ojibwe, Dawna Marie Hagen was born on February 2, 1926 in White Earth, MN to Robert and Sophie Roy (nee Shambow). Like her two older siblings, Dawna grew up on the reservation and was educated at St. Benedict’s Mission School. A few years after her father passed away, Dawna and her mother moved to North Dakota, where Sophie began work as a cook at the Wahpeton Indian School. Dawna later met her future husband, Oliver Clayton Hagen, when his high school basketball team was practicing in the gym of Dawna’s school. They began dating, but after the attack on Pearl Harbor on Clayton’s 18th birthday, he joined the army serving in the Philippines and Japan.
With the world at war, after graduation, Dawna and a close friend moved to Bremerton, WA where she worked as a dispatcher in the shipyard, returning to Wahpeton when word that Clayton was returning reached her. They were engaged and married a few months later, on Valentine’s Day, 1948.
After retirement, Dawna kept busy volunteering and bowling, reading and scrapbooking. Engelbert Humperdinck was her favorite performer, and she traveled annually for many of the last several years with Vikki to see him sing live and meeting him in person on a few occasions. She enjoyed crocheting, making baby blankets, prayer shawls and countless scarves, which she joyfully gifted to friends and family.
Dawna died peacefully on her 94th birthday and is preceded in death by her beloved husband, Clayton; and survived by her daughters and their husbands, Vikki and Bob French (Rapid City, SD), and Stacy and Gary Patterson (Los Angeles, CA); several nephews and nieces, especially Jackie Rhodes (Albuquerque, NM); step-grandchildren and their children; and many, many life-long and new friends, all of whom she considered “family.”
A Rosary will be recited on Monday, February 10, 2020, 6:00 p.m., at FRENCH – Wyoming.
