Dates

• Existence: 1920-

Biography

Emmylou Bebensee Krohn, teacher, columnist, and farmwoman, was born November 3, 1920, in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and raised on a farm in Pottawattamie County, Iowa. After graduating from high school in 1937, she enrolled in the teacher certification program at Omaha University. She taught rural schools at Keg Creek in 1939 and 1940. Eugene Krohn was working for her father as a hired hand during these years. They courted with seven or eight other couples in the township, marrying at the local church on April 5, 1942. When World War II began, Eugene Krohn left for Kansas to serve in the military, and Emmylou Krohn taught another year at a Hardin township school. She then joined her husband where he was stationed in Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1944. While there, she acted as chaperone to other young, single women and taught at the base nursery school. In 1945, Eugene Krohn was dispatched overseas just before she delivered her son Max. She returned to her parents' farm in Iowa and was rejoined by her husband later that year.

Emmylou and Eugene Krohn then operated her family's farm. They had a second son Lyle in 1952 and a daughter Jane in 1954. In 1957, when Eugene Krohn had his first heart attack, the Krohns cut back on farming. In 1956, she began selling articles to Farm Journal and in the early 1960s began a weekly column for the Treynor Record. That year, she also found a teaching position at the Iowa School for the Deaf in Council Bluffs and began taking courses at Omaha University to complete her B. A. in education. In 1972, she co-authored a grammar textbook for hearing-impaired children. She gave numerous workshops based on this language program from 1973 until 1983, when she retired.

The Krohns left the farm to move to Council Bluffs in 1980. She continued teaching at the Iowa School for the Deaf until 1983 when their daughter had a severe stroke. She continued writing articles for the Treynor Record until 1986 and kept up an active correspondence with family and friends.

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