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Lenabelle McGinnis Bock

1904 - 2007

 

Lenabelle (McGinnis) Bock

Mount Morris, Ill. — Lenabelle (McGinnis) Bock died Saturday (Oct. 6, 2007) at Pinecrest Manor in Mount Morris, Ill.

Born on June 30, 1904, in Linden, Iowa, she was the daughter of Gertrude (Holloway) and Robert McGinnis. She was raised in Linden, Redfield, South Dakota, and Stanley, Iowa.

 

Her teaching degree was earned at Iowa State University and Northern Iowa University followed by teaching assignments in Swaledale and Klemme, where she met her husband, Edwin Frederick Bock. They were married in 1930. They established their home in Garner, where Ed Bock was an oil jobber. Since school boards did not hire married women, Lenabelle cooked a noon meal in their home for teachers in the Garner Public School District.

The couple raised two daughters, Mary Margaret and Virginia Mae. When World War II broke out, school districts were only too glad to have married women as teachers. She returned to the Klemme schools and then to the Hayfield school system where she taught home economics until 1947.

 

Always a volunteer in the Garner community, Lenabelle was an ardent member of the Republican Party. She was asked to run for a seat in the Iowa Legislature in 1960. She accepted, ran and won and represented Hancock County for two terms. Lenabelle was one of five women in the Iowa House of Representatives. She worked hard both in the legislature and in her district. She is remembered for her statement: “Women in the legislature need to look like a girl, act like a lady, think like a man, and work like a dog.” Her political papers reside in the Iowa Women’s Archive at the University of Iowa.

In 1970 Lenabelle and her husband built a home in Clear Lake, where they lived for 25 years. When Ed Bock retired, they spent their winters in Arizona. At his death in 1995 she moved to Pinecrest Village in Illinois.

Preceding her in death were her husband, Edwin F. Bock; her parents; two brothers, Gerald and Howard McGinnis; and a sister, Frieda McGinnis Conrath.

 

She is survived by her daughters, Mary B. Bushnell (Meg) and her husband, Fred, and Virginia Lemire and her husband Robert Lemire. She also leaves six grandchildren: Frederic Bushnell III and his wife, Drusie (Taylor), John Bushnell and his wife, Christine (Zimmerman), Cade Bushnell and his wife, Mari Lyn (Gilmore), Edwin (Ned) Bushnell and his wife, Lyrah (Austin), Elise Lemire and her husband, James Taylor, and Robert (Bo) Lemire and his wife, Melissa (Strong); and eight great- grandchildren: Thomas, Benjamin and Matthew Bushnell, Grace and Ross Bushnell, Eli Taylor-Lemire;, Zachary and Sophia Lemire.

Lena Belle Bock’s ashes will be interred at Clear Lake, Iowa, at a later date.

source: Globe Gazette, Mason City, Iowa, 11 Oct 2007, page A8, column 1
 

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