Geraldine Rebecca SCHWARZ Died May 2, 2001 of complications of old age at Tacoma Lutheran Home. She was born July 17 in Sunbury, Pennsylvania to Harvey Leroy Keefer and Katherine Reed Keefer. She was raised in Appalachian poverty by her mother earning a scholarship to Columbia University Presbyterian Hospital Nursing School from which she graduated in 1937. She was a head nurse at Columbia until it formed the Second General Hospital at the outbreak of American involvement of WWII. She served with that Unit at Oxford England taking care of 8th Air Force crews until the invasion. She was badly injured in an ambulance accident in Normandy. Rather than return to the United States she rejoined her unit in eastern France and served with them un til the end of the war. She married Virgil Arthur Schwarz one of her wounded soldiers and moved to Tacoma with him in 1946 working in several doctors' offices as a nurse until her children came. He eventually founded and was CEO of Schwarz, Shera and Associates, an insurance brokerage firm now known as Raleigh, Schwarz & Powell. Her efforts were always focused on her five chlidren and related to that volunteered at St. Patrick's School and Bellarmine High School. A social highlight was sharing a state dinner in the Ford White House with her no long er young lieutenant "Bud". Her brother George Keefer died in Burns and her husband predeceased her in 1990. Survivors include her daughter Geraldine K. Schwarz of Seattle, sons Robert G. Schwarz of Forest Lake, MN., James A. Schwarz, M.D. of Portland, OR., Williams M. Schwarz of Tacoma, and Thomas P. Schwarz currently of Ft. Worth, Texas. All of who thank the staff at Weatherly and Lutheran Home who assisted her for the past several years. A Rosary will be held at Gaffney's Funeral Home Chapel, 1002 S. Yakima Ave., Friday, May 4, 2001 at 7 p.m. and Funeral Mass at St. Patrick's Church Saturday, May 5, 2001 at 11 a. m. Interment at Calvary Cemetery. Remembrances may be made to the V.A. Schwarz Memorial Fund at Bellarmine High School. Arrangements by Gaffney Cassedy Al len & Buckley King Funeral Home. May 4, 2001 Seattle Times