Johanna V. Oetjen Endowed Scholarship

This scholarship was established in 1998 by a bequest from the estate of Johanna V. Oetjen (pronounced et’ jen). Ms. Oetjen was born in 1897 in Haycreek, Wisconsin. She passed away in 1996 in Chicago — just shy of her 99th birthday.

Ms. Oetjen started her medical career as a visiting nurse in poor, rural areas of southeastern Kentucky. Frequently, she travelled to where she was needed on horseback, carrying not only her medical supplies but adequate food and cover for herself. In 1930, she moved to Chicago, spending part of her time as a private caregiver and part of her time on the nursing staff at the now-closed Grant Hospital on Chicago’s north side.

Ms. Oetjen is remembered as a person of great strength and character with an abiding love of art, music and her faith. She valued nature and thoroughly enjoyed the outdoors. But most of all, she possessed a compassion and genuine affection for all the people who touched her life or whose lives were touched by hers as a nurse. In her estate plan that created this scholarship, Ms. Oetjen requested that “all those who receive her assistance will treat each patient and the family of each patient with the same kind of care, love and respect she would have.”