Conrad, Nancy Rebekah Hernley (1919-2010)

Mennonite Weekly Review obituary: 2010 Sep 20 p. 7

Birth date: 1919 Mar 18

text of obituary:

Nurse who served in India dies at 91

By DeVonna R. Allison

Mennonite Mission Network

GOSHEN, Ind. — Nancy Rebekah Conrad, a nurse who helped found a hospital in Ethiopia and served 16 years in India, died Aug. 28. She was 91.

From 1951 to 1967, she and her husband, Pual, served in Dhamtari, India, with Mennonite Board of Missions, a predecessor agency of Mennonite Mission Network.

Katherine Yutzy of Goshen, who served with Conrad at the hospital in Dhamtari, remembers Conrad as a mentor. Though she was busy raising her four children, Yutzy said, she had a special relationship with the local women.

"[Nancy] worked with them, talked with them, helped them and visited them," Yutzy said.

Conrad was born March 18, 1919, in Scottdale, Pa., to Henry and Daisy (Cutrell) Hernley. She attended Goshen (Ind.) College and La Junta (Colo.) Mennonite Hospital School of Nursing, graduating in 1943.

As World War II wound down, she traveled on a troop ship to a United Nations refugee camp near Alexandria, Egypt. There she ministered to the medical needs of Yugoslavian women and children left homeless and traumatized by the war. Later, she worked in a similar camp with Greek women in Gaza, Palestine.

In 1945 she transferred to Nazareth, Ethiopia, where in 1946 she married Paul L. Conrad of Canby, Ore. For the next three years, the Conrads helped found the first hospital in the Nazareth area.

After serving in India, the family family [sic] returned to the United States in 1967. For 10 years Conrad had a private practice as a mental health nurse clinician. From 1982 to 1984 she was president of Mennonite Nurses Association, which named her Nurse of the Year in 1994. The Conrads also worked with returning missionary families at Laurelville Mennonite Church Center in Pennsylvania.

She is survived by two sons, Glenn Conrad and his wife, Peggy, and Paul Conrad and his wife, Marti; a daughter, Mary Lo and her husband, Mathew; three sisters, Ferne, Catherine and Martha; and grandchildren.

She was preceded in death by her husband, Paul; a sister, Lilian; two brothers, Marshall and Ralph; and a son, John.