Biography

Katherine Brookhart Willson was born in 1930 in Haleyville, Oklahoma to Edmund and Bettie Brookhart. Her father's jobs as a railroad worker, a farmer, and a bus driver caused the Brookhart family to move back and forth between Oklahoma and Iowa throughout Katherine Brookhart's childhood. Through the years 1945 to 1948, Brookhart was a member of the Oklahoma High School Honor Society, and in 1949 she graduated from West Liberty High School. In 1954, she graduated from the College of Pharmacy at the State University of Iowa, now referred to as the University of Iowa. While Brookhart was attending the University of Iowa, she was recognized for maintaining a GPA of 3.0 or higher and was a member of the Kappa Epsilon sorority. After she graduated from college, Brookhart interned at Nollen's Drug Store in Newton, Iowa and became a licensed pharmacist in 1955. That same year, she married John Willson, and in 1960, she had her only child, Esther. Katherine Willson was a pharmacist for over fifty years, practicing between the years 1955 and 2009. Willson moved multiple times throughout her career due to her husband's job, which led to her being licensed to practice in not only Iowa, but Illinois, Missouri, and Virginia as well. The Willsons had been married for fifty-six years when John Willson passed away in 2011, and Katherine Willson passed away in 2017 in West Liberty, Iowa.

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