- Date Of Birth: September 19, 1916
- Date Of Death: April 13, 2010
- State: Montana
Dorothy Monson, 94, was born September 19, 1916 in Devils Lake, North Dakota, to Carl and Nettie Nelson. After graduating from Devils Lake High School in l934, she enrolled in Concordia College in Moorhead Minnesota, where she graduated in 1938 with a major in English and a minor in music.
She taught English and music at the high school in Warwick, North Dakota for a year, and on January 1, 1940 she married Allwin Monson, a Concordia College classmate from Shelby, Montana. They lived in St. Thomas, North Dakota for a few months, then moved to Denver, where Allwin received a master’s degree in speech. After a year in Denver they moved to Syracuse, New York, where they lived until Allwin joined the faculty at Concordia College in l948.
In 1950 Dorothy went to work in the Office of the Academic Dean at Concordia, where she headed the Placement Office. In that capacity she helped students through the interview and hiring process for their first jobs after graduation.
After several years in the Placement Office, Dorothy retired, but soon after retirement went back to school at Concordia to update her teaching certificate. She then took a temporary position in the Moorhead Public Schools teaching special needs students, and discovered her passion was teaching special education. At the age of 53, after teaching special needs students for a number of years, Dorothy got a sabbatical to attend graduate school at San Francisco State University, where she received her Master’s degree in Special Education. She returned to the Moorhead schools and taught special education for several years before retiring.
In 1983 Dorothy and Allwin moved to Kalispell. Dorothy did volunteer work in Kalispell, and they enjoyed hiking, camping, fishing and cross country skiing. Among friends and family Dorothy became famous for her huckleberry pies baked on a camp stove and her skill in driving bears out of camp with a canoe paddle.
Dorothy is survived by her husband Allwin, of Kalispell, a daughter, Joyce Tsongas and a son, Arthur Monson, both of Portland, Oregon, as well as a grandson, Christopher Tsongas, of Seattle and a granddaughter, Mika Tsongas of Sandpoint, Idaho.
