Grove, Dorothy (1926-2010)

Mennonite Weekly Review obituary: 2010 Dec 13 p. 7

Birth date: 1926

text of obituary:

Widow of missionary martyred 48 years ago in Somalia dies

By Jewel Showalter

Eastern Mennonite missions

CAMBRIDGE, Ont. — Dorothy Grove, a mission worker whose husband was killed in Mogadishu, Somalia, by a radical Muslim cleric in 1962, died Nov. 6. She was 84.

Before going to Somalia with Eastern Mennonite Missions in 1960, Grove and her husband, Merlin, sold their Ontario farm business.

"Merlin felt a call to go to Somalia," Grove wrote in an article for Missionary Messenger in 2000. "We were assured that god had called us to this work."

In Somalia, the Groves immediately began service at the Mennonite mission's boarding school for boys in Mahaddei. Merlin worked as a teacher and administrator, while Dorothy home-schooled their three young children, helped mother boys in the boarding school and made friends in the nearby village.

The next year they moved to Mogadishu, where Merlin became director of the Mennonite mission.

On July 16, 1962, while Merlin was registering students for English classes in the capital city, an Islamic mullah fatally stabbed him.