Ottilie “Otty” Schmakal Blodi was born to Josephine Schmakal (later changed spelling to Smakal) in Molding, Austria, in 1917. Raised in that small town just outside of Vienna, Schmakal lived with her aunt (Anna Relko) and uncle after her widowed mother remarried and moved to New York City. After Schmakal completed her schooling, she moved to New York to join her mother in 1938. Schmakal was already engaged to her childhood sweetheart, Frederick “Fred” Blodi, at the time. Schmakal held various jobs in New York, including dental hygienist and governess. In 1944, she became a United States citizen, enlisted in the United States Women’s Army Corps, and trained as a nurse at Fort Des Moines, the first army training facility for women. Schmakal worked briefly at a triage facility in New York before being transferred to Germany, where she served as a translator, traveling to different cities to assist in the interrogation of Nazi officers. Schmakal enjoyed being a member of the Women’s Army Corps and eventually reached the rank of technical sergeant.

Ottilie Schmakal and her future husband, Frederick “Fred” Blodi, became engaged on the eve of World War Two, shortly before Schmakal left Austria and moved to New York to live with her mother and stepfather. Frederick Blodi was enrolled in medical school in Vienna at the time and graduated as a doctor of ophthalmology in 1940. Schmakal and Blodi struggled to maintain communication as the war progressed and lost contact for several months before Schmakal came to Germany with the Women’s Army Corps. Once in Europe, Schmakal worked to locate her fiancé and eventually found him in Vienna, working at a hospital after being liberated from a concentration camp. Blodi had been imprisoned for political crimes against the Nazi Party when he helped two Austrian men avoid conscription. Happily reunited, the couple was eager to marry, but Schmakal had to apply for special permission because of the United States’ concerns about Austrian citizens’ possible affiliations with the Nazi Party. Schmakal was one of the first three Americans granted permission by her commanding officer, General Mark W. Clark. The couple wed at the Hapsburg Imperial Chapel in Vienna on April 22, 1946.

In 1947, Frederick Blodi received a fellowship at Columbia University and the couple moved to New York. They then moved to Iowa City in 1952, after Frederick Blodi accepted a faculty position in Ophthalmology at the University of Iowa. Ottilie and Frederick Blodi had two children, Barbara and Christopher, both of whom went on to become ophthalmologists like their father. Ottilie Blodi lived in Iowa City for the rest of her life and was active in the Unitarian Church and the United Nations Association, as well as helping to establish the Civic Music Association of Iowa City and the Hancher Guild. After Frederick Blodi’s death in 1996, Ottilie Blodi moved to Oaknoll Retirement Community, where she lived for over twenty years. She died there in 2019.