Erma Dunnington, 94 of Corvallis, Oregon passed away in her sleep March 3 2026 at Timberhill Place assisted living in Corvallis. A visitation will be held from 10:30 am to 11:30 am, Friday, May 15, 2026 at Mullinax Funeral Home, Drexel (816-657-4400). Burial will follow in Sharon Cemetery, Drexel, Missouri. Messages of condolence may be left for the family at www.mullinaxfuneralhome.com.
Erma E. Dunnington was born November 4, 1931 to Leslie C Dunnington and Elizabeth C (Garner) Dunnington at their home in Drexel, Missouri.
Erma graduated second in her class from Central Missouri State University at Warrensburg, Missouri in 1955 with a BS and major in Art. She worked for 9 years as a lettering artist for Hallmark Cards, Inc. in Kansas City, MO. In 1964 she joined Peace Corps, trained at Marquette University and lived and worked for 3 years in the Favelas (slums) of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where she did Community Development and created art projects for health educational visual aids. After returning from Brazil in 1967 and was invited to train one group of trainees at the University of Wisconsin, she entered the graduate program in Counseling at Kansas University (KU) where she earned a MSED in 1971. While at KU she was a Research Asst. to the Assoc. Dean of Education working with a federally funded foreign assistance program with the Organization of American States in Central America. In the summer of 1969, she was selected by the KU Dept of Education to be a member of a research group in Costa Rica under a Ford Foundation Field Study Grant from which the data she collected was used for her Master's Theses.
After receiving her Master's Degree, she held the position of Asst. Dean of Student Affairs at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, PA., and then served as Asst. Director then Director of the Mutual Application Program for the Union of Independent Colleges of Art, a consortium of 9 of the leading private colleges of art in the country. This required extensive recruitment traveling which included taking off in a small commuter plane and flying low over New York City looking down on the electric display of the largest city in the world. In 1975 she returned to ACTION/Peace Corps Headquarters as a Peace Corps staff member in Washington, D.C. serving principally as Supervisor for the Peace Corps Applicant Liaison Branch. Other duties involved top secret clearance to review and downgrade top secret documents for release under Freedom of Information and Privacy Act requests. From 1982-85 she returned to her hometown of Drexel, MO to help care for her mother who was ill with cancer.
In 1985 she returned to Federal
Employment in Washington, D.C. at the Bureau of Mines, under the Dept. of the
Interior. She retired in 1995 from this Bureau/Dept. where she was Records
Officer then Audit Liaison Officer and Management Control Coordinator. These
included caring for and archiving the Bureau's records at the National Archives
of the United States; worked with the Bureau's compliance with the Freedom of
Information and Privacy Acts; and coordinated all audit and investigations
within the Bureau of Mines conducted by the Interior's Office of Inspector
General and the General Accounting Office (which is the investigative office
for the U.S. Congress).
During the years spent at the Bureau of Mines she was diagnosed with and survived four different major cancers. Serious health problems have been a challenge throughout her life including pulmonary Histoplasmosis as a preteen which became a newly discovered disease during the second War World when the symptoms were observed in new military recruits; amebic hepatitis contracted while in Peace Corps; and the Neuroendoctrine Carcinoma (metastasized Carcinoid in the liver) which was a factor in the cause of her terminal illness).
After retirement she enjoyed
living in the Metropolitan Washington, D.C. area with all its continuing
educational opportunities especially courses/lectures at the Smithsonian
Institution and fabulous art museums highlighted by the National Gallery of Art.
Many cultural events were available at places like the Kennedy Center for the
Performing Arts. Plus similar opportunities were available in nearby
Philadelphia and New York City. Washington, D.C. is a dynamic center for new
history in the making as well as surrounded by the eventful places of the
establishment and development of our country. An historical event that was
seared into her memory was the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. She
lived only one block from the Pentagon, heard the impact of the plane crashing
into the Pentagon and watched in disbelief from the roof of her apartment
building as the events unfolded. It was so depressing that it seemed the world
had turned grey and remained that way for months afterward.
She was listed in the publications of Who's Who of American Women and the International Biographical Centre of Cambridge, England. She considered her greatest reward in life was to be of service to others.
Erma was preceded in death by her beloved parents, her sister Eloise Westhoff, and niece Olive Elizabeth (Westhoff) Derrington. She is survived by her brother Leslie G Dunnington and wife Diana, nephews John L Westhoff and wife Neva, Kenneth Derrington and nieces Lynn Bybee, Marie Dunnington and Julie Johnson.
