Rosabelle Hamann was a dedicated teacher, foreign student advisor, American
Red Cross volunteer and a woman who made a difference in the world. She was
born at Mora, Minnesota on November 21, 1915. Raised on a dairy farm, her
high school teachers encouraged her to seek higher education. During the
depth of the depression she was able to save enough money to enter the
University of Minnesota, where she earned a teaching degree in Home
Economics.

After several years of teaching in Minnesota she went to visit friends in Los
Angeles during the summer of 1942. While in LA she worked briefly for
Western Airlines. WWII was underway and escalating in the Pacific. Like
most Americans she wanted to help with the war effort and volunteered to
join the hospital service of the American Red Cross.

She was sent to Hollandia, New Guinea and later the Philippines where
she attended to sick and injured. It was here that she painted portraits
of the soldiers in her care. The time serving in the Pacific would be one of
the most important periods of Rosabelle’s life. Her experiences and
memories from the war would alter the course of her life, and ultimately
that of many others decades later.

After the war ended Rosabelle lived and worked in Europe teaching at the American high school in Heidelberg, Germany. She was interested in the cross- cultural adoptions occurring in Germany following the war. In the mid 1950’s she returned to the states and entered the University of California at Berkeley earning a masters degree. In the fall of 1956 she joined the faculty of Monterey Peninsula College where she taught Family Life Education (currently titled family and consumer science) for the next twenty years, retiring in 1976.

During her time at MPC  when she was the foreign student advisor, she established friendships that continued throughout her life. She traveled the world several times and kept in contact with families on many continents.

Rosabelle Hamann was always interested and concerned about people and how they lived. There is no doubt that she could not have possibly realized how many lives she had impacted. I never met her, but she forever changed the course of my life.  I am most grateful to be called to tell her untold story. Every life has a story worth telling.