Eigsti, Agnes Weaver (1910-2010)

Mennonite Weekly Review obituary: 2010 Mar 1 p. 13

Birth date: 1910 Oct 10

text of obituary:

AGNES EIGSTI

Agnes Weaver Eigsti, 99, died Feb. 16, 2010, at Greencroft Senior Residences in Goshen, Ind. She was born Oct. 10, 1910, on a farm east of Goshen, a few miles from her father’s birthplace and her grandfather’s farm, whose name “Joseph Weaver, 1888” is still to be seen on the roof of the barn.

She spent her early years in Goshen, moved with her family to Oregon as a teenager, then returned to Goshen, where she graduated from Goshen High School in 1928. She attended Goshen College, receiving her bachelor’s degree in 1932.

In 1936 she married O.J. Eigsti, also a Goshen College graduate and subsequent developer of the seedless watermelon.

They were married for 67 years and lived in many places during that time: Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, N.Y.; Norman, Okla.; Evanston, Ill.; Normal, Ill.; and Chicago. In 1952, O.J. Eigsti received a Fulbright Lectureship to Pakistan and India, where they lived for a year, returning to the U.S. by way of Belgium and Switzerland, where they also lived in the fall of 1953. From 1960 to the mid-’70s she was the head of the Parasitology Laboratory at General Biological Supply House in Chicago while her husband was a professor at Chicago State University.

They retired to the Weaver family farm east of Goshen and later moved to College Green in Goshen. In their later years they spent six months of every year at La Posada in Green Valley, Ariz., where they owned a home.

They were benefactors to Goshen College, donating the Eigsti Track and Field Complex and contributing to construction of the Music Center. She was also a benefactor to the Merry Lea Environmental Learning Center of Goshen College.

Survivors include two sons, Karl of New York City and Nick of Sarasota, Fla.; a brother, Robert of Waldron Island, Wash.; three grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

She was preceded in death by her husband, O.J. Eigsti, in May 2003.