Obit: Harvey, Grace Charlotte (1916? - 2015)

Contact: Robert Lipprandt
bob@wiclarkcountyhistory.org 

Surnames: Garneau, Harvey, Riplinger

----Source: The Tribune - Phonograph (Abbotsford, WI) 11/16/2015

Harvey, Grace Charlotte (Riplinger) (1916? - 14 NOV 2015)

Grace Charlotte Riplinger Harvey, age 99, died on November 14, 2015, in Nashville, Tennessee.

Born in Osborne (later called Riplinger), Wisconsin, on September 30, 1916, she was tennis champion of her high school in Colby, Wisconsin.

Upon graduation from high school, she took medical training in Minneapolis, MN, and worked in a charity hospital in Texas and several doctors’ offices. She returned to school and was graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a Bachelor’s degree in Zoology, where she was also a member of the AAUW (American Association of University Women). From there, she attended the University of Chicago, then worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II, conducting radium research and translating research papers written by Marie Curie and others from French to English for the project.

After her marriage to Air Force Captain Ray W. Harvey in 1944 and following World War II, they moved to Louisiana, where he attended college at LSU on the GI bill and she was enrolled as a graduate student in Zoology, taught invertebrate zoology and did genetics research. She and Mr. Harvey moved to Indiana where he attended Purdue University, studying aeronautical engineering, and she worked in a medical lab.

Upon moving to middle Tennessee in the 50s where Mr. Harvey was employed at A.E.D.C., and as the mother of three children, she became an avid volunteer in the community. It was her lifelong goal to enrich and bring up standards of living in any community. She did this by starting the first public library in Manchester, so all children could share in the joys, beauty and intellectual enrichment of books. Prior to that, only the wealthy families in the town borrowed books from one another.

She also was on the the PTA and, working with the national PTA organization and the Coffee County School Board, spearheaded the hiring of teachers trained at Columbia Teachers College and Peabody College in Nashville for Coffee County Schools to bring up the quality of education in this small town. She was also instrumental in the building of the first hospital in Manchester, which now serves the larger region.

An Episcopalian, she was one of a group of people who started St. Bede’s Episcopal Church in Manchester, where she was also the organist and choirmaster. The family moved to Sewanee, where Mrs. Harvey was a librarian at St. Luke’s Theology Library at the University of the South from 1968 – 1997, when she retired at age 70. After that, she enjoyed traveling with her husband, as well as many bridge games, concerts, lectures and friends at the University.

She is survived by her son, Ray W. Harvey, Jr., of Nashville, TN, her daughter, Katherine H. Garneau, of Tampa, FL, four grandchildren, Chad, Mary-Grace, Rebecca and Matthew, and three great-grandchildren, Kylie, Tobi and Effie.

She is predeceased by three siblings, Vernetta, Lorraine and Ben, her husband, Ray, and her son, Paul.

Visitation will be from 12:30 to 2:30 on November 19, 2015, at Otey Memorial Parish Hall in Sewanee, TN. Services will be held at Otey Memorial Episcopal Church at 2:30, followed by interment at University of the South Cemetery in Sewanee, Tennessee.

Moore-Cortner Funeral Home, 300 First Ave NW, WInchester, TN 37398, 931-967-2222, www.moorecortner.com. 

Note: Birth data was not published with obituary.