Miss Hootman received her primary education in various public schools. In Lowell, Ind., she received the Gold Medal of her class in eighth grade work.
She attended the Union City schools four years, Tonawanda, N.Y. schools four years, Logansport schools, nearly three years. She graduated in South Bend, Ind., in 1910, as the literary scholar of her class, and also as its vice-president. The class numbered 106 students and [she] took the leading lady's part in the commencement play in the Oliver opera house.
She spent two summers in Winona Normal College, one summer at Wisconsin University, and one summer at Cornell University. She spent some time in the eastern and southern cities and made a special study of Child Psychology and Child Training. She taught in the South Bend public schools for three years, and three years in the Greencastle public schools, in which occupation she was eminently successful.
Her fondness for children and old people was one of her marked characteristics. She was a great lover of animal pets, a constant and methodical student, and incessant reader of her Bible, and good literature -- a good story writer and an apt story teller.
At the early age of ten years, she gave her heart and life to Christ, her Lord and Savior, yielding a humble and loving obedience to his commands, and came into the church under the ministry of her father, as did all her brothers and sisters.
While living in Lowell, she taught instrumental music and was her father's organist for three years there in the church.
While in South Bend she took a two year Manual Training and Domestic Science course in the night school, and taught basketry and sewing in the schools. As a seamstress she was very accomplished, and carried her artistic tastes into the realm of china painting, of which she left an abundance. She was a hard and persistent worker; she was exact and very methodical, exceedingly conscientious, and well posted in current events. She abhorred pretense and ostentation, but was a great lover of true dignified manhood and womanly character.
She was a continuous teacher in the Sunday school from the time she was seventeen until her health began to fail. She spoke often of Heaven and what it would be like. She chose the color of her own casket, wished no music at her funeral, but desired an inspirational sermon on the uplift of all humanity.
Miss Grace is survived by a fond father and loving mother, two sisters, Mrs. Louis E. Tagmeyer, in Memphis, Tenn., and Mrs. William Reddick, of New York City, also two brothers, Millard C. Hootman, of Dallas, Texas, and Herald M., who is now a student at DePauw University.
The funeral services were conducted on Wednesday, December 3, at 11 a.m. from the Cristian church at Greencastle, conducted by Dr. Levi Marshal, minister of the church, and Dr. Cyrus U. Wade, former district superintendent of the M.E. church and a near neighbor. The parents left over the Big Four railroad, at 1: 39 p.m. for Union City, Ind., where the remains were interred in the family burial lot. A brief service was held at the home of Jason J. Downing, on Thursday at 10:30 a.m. by the Union City retired minister, J.H. Vincent.
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