Elizabeth Ide Reihmer, 89, nurse

Elizabeth Ide Reihmer and her husband, Donald, shared an adventurous spirit.

On Mar. 24, 1950, the Evening Bulletin reported that they were to be given a farewell that evening by the Beverly Hills United Presbyterian Church in Upper Darby.

"The Reihmers, who have had no previous experience in foreign mission work," the newspaper reported, were to leave by the end of the month, to carry Christianity "to pagan tribes" in Ethiopia.

She was 29, he was 30, and with them was Adrianne, an 11-month-old daughter.

On Friday, June 4, Mrs. Reihmer, 89, a former registered nurse, died of kidney failure at the St. Johnsbury, Vt., home of another daughter, Sharon.

The 1950 news story reported that in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, Donald Reihmer "will direct a school for girls and a church operated by the United Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions."

It did not state what Mrs. Reihmer would do.

But daughter LeeAnn Trusty said that because she had been an expert on the rifle team in high school, Mrs. Reihmer occasionally went out to hunt reedbucks, medium-size antelopes, to help feed those working in mission outposts.

Born in Louisville, Ky., Mrs. Reihmer graduated from Upper Darby High School in 1938. She played on the field hockey team and was a member of an all-star team in Delaware County. She attended Wheaton (Ill.) College.

During World War II, Trusty said, she worked for a Delaware County defense plant, helping to assemble ailerons, the hinged sections of wings that make an aircraft change direction in flight.

When the family returned from Ethiopia, Donald Reihmer became an interim pastor at Stonybank Church in Glen Mills, though, Trusty said, he was never an ordained minister. He later worked for New York Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co. in Camden and for Radio Corp. of America.

After raising her family, Mrs. Reihmer graduated from a three-year nursing program at Delaware County Community College in the early 1970s.

For three years, she worked in the burn unit at Crozer-Chester Medical Center before nursing first at Lima Estates, the retirement community near Media, and then for a Havertown physician.

Besides her daughters, including Adrianne Galletta, Mrs. Reihmer is survived by another daughter, Carol Works, two brothers, two sisters, 12 grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. Her husband died in 2004.

Visitation was set for 10 a.m. Thursday, June 10, at the Blue Church, 940 Baltimore Pike, Springfield, Delaware County before an 11 a.m. funeral service there, with burial in Edgewood Memorial Park, Glen Mills.