30: Gerda Dwyer: A Life of Resilience

Gerda Dwyer has been through some of the most harrowing experiences in history. As a child, she lived through WWII in Germany. She experienced bombings, losing loved ones, starvation, and the constant terrors of war. Her stories illustrate the dangers of war and dictatorship but also her and her family’s bravery and resilience.

After the war, Gerda left home, met and married an American GI, and immigrated to the US on a ship with a five-month-old baby. She became a single mother after her first marriage ended and worked hard to provide for her girls, Virginia and Suzanne. She later married Dr. Jacob H. Weis, who had been a contributor to the Manhattan project and worked alongside Dr. Oppenheimer on the first A-bomb. 

After that marriage ended, she met and married Tom Dwyer, a kind and loving man to whom she was married for nearly 25 years. She worked for Hewlett-Packard for about 25 years as well, which eventually led her and her family to move to Boise, Idaho.

She is a devoted mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother who loves her family more than anything.