Patrica (Lierman) Venzke
Memorial Service
Friday, March 12, 2021
11:00 a.m.
Service at Trinity + Soulard
Patricia Anne Venzke (nee Lierman) was born in Santa Ana, California. During her childhood, her family moved to several western locations and eventually settled near Twin Falls, Idaho.
Following graduation from Twin Falls High School, Pat became a member of the first coed class to enroll in the former Concordia Junior College, Portland, OR. Along with her classmates, she was recruited as part of an effort to relieve the growing demand for Lutheran parochial school teachers in the 1950’s. After junior college and one summer session at a teachers’ college, she and her classmates were certified as teachers and Pat taught in schools in Council Bluffs, IA, and Overland, MO.
Pat met Rodger Venzke, a pre-ministerial candidate at Concordia and they married in 1959 at the beginning of his year of vicarage in Cincinnati, OH. After Rodger’s seminary graduation in 1961, his first pastoral assignment was to two rural churches in northern Minnesota. Pat had barely adjusted to life in Minnesota’s remote, rural environment when, in 1963, Rodger accepted a call to enter active duty as an Army chaplain. Thus Pat began her “career” as a creative mother and home-maker, with the uncanny ability to find part time employment or volunteer positions at virtually every location. (During their life together, Pat and Rodger lived in more than 20 different houses and apartments.)
Pat was a master home decorator, a talented cook and a gregarious hostess. But above all else, she was a devoted child of our heavenly Father upon whose grace upon whose grace she fully depended.
Pat is survived by two siblings: Nancy (wife of Dr. Paul Trautman, Dallas, TX) and Wally (Dr. Walter Lierman, West Linn, OR); her husband, Rodger; three children: Kimberly (wife of Allen Ohlstein, Leavenworth, KS) Lori (wife of attorney Bradley Schleier, Phoenix, AZ) and Matt (Col., USAF, Ret. and wife, Michelle, Yorktown, VA); and four grandchildren: Benjamin and Alexandra McMillan, and Samuel and Luke Schleier.