Hazel L. Westby

Hazel Lillian Westby was born on April 13, 1911, in Maddock, ND, to Christian and Hanna Ruud Westby. She grew up and attended school there. She graduated from Concordia College in Moorhead, MN, in 1932 with a major in home economics. She taught for eight years in Minnesota high schools. She completed the requirements for a Bachelor of Science degree, also in home economics, at the University of Wisconsin in 1941. The following year she received a Master's Degree from Teacher's College of Columbia University she has also done additional work at the University of California at Berkeley and New York University.In 1942 she resumed teaching, this time at the college level. She was on the faculties of Montana State College and the universities of Vermont, Miami and Rhode Island. She was granted a one year leave of absence from the University of Miami in 1951 to be acting head of the Department of Home Economics at Beirut College for Women, the start of her work overseas. While headquartered in the Mideast, she served the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization as a resource person for home economics workshops in Syria. She spent two years in Ecuador as part of a foreign aid program of the State Department. Her name appears as co-author on the first manual for home economics teachers in the Spanish speaking nations of Central and South America. In 1958 she moved from Ecuador to Honduras under the auspices of the Agency for International Development, where she supervised the instruction of home economics teachers in three schools. During this five year period she often found herself in a Jeep, fording a river or negotiating a jungle trail. Back in this country, her pioneering spirit led her to the University of Arizona, where, as an extension agent, she conducted a pilot program on the Papago Indian Reservation. From that experience she developed a new home economics course for the Universit of Arizona. In retirement, she was active in the American Lutheran Church Women in Tucson, Arizona and in Lutheran Social Ministry. She was also very active in the Norseman's Federation in Tucson.Hazel was preceded in death by her sister, Maude, and her brother, Clifford. She is survived by her sister-in-law, Lucille Westby, of Maddock, ND.