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- [S2669] Legacy Website, 10 April 2014; Muriel Dafoe.
Muriel Dafoe
Muriel S. Dafoe, 90, devoted wife, mother, and nurse, died on September 14, in Orlando, Florida, surrounded by her loving husband and children.
Muriel Isabel Sprissler was born on November 29, 1921, in Boston, Massachusetts and graduated from Boston Girls Latin School, a competitive exam school, and later from Boston's Faulkner Hospital where she earned her R.N. While in nurses' training, she met and married William A. Dafoe, then a student at Harvard Medical School. They married secretly because nurses-in-training at that time were not allowed to marry before graduation.
After Dr. Dafoe's advanced training at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, the couple moved their growing family to Appleton, where they lived for 43 years and raised their eight children. Muriel Dafoe worked as a nurse in her husband's surgical practice for many years.
She was happiest when she had lots of kids running around the house. She was popular in the neighborhood for allowing her children and their friends to put on shows in the basement or to borrow her flour to mark off a baseball diamond in the backyard. She liked teenagers best of all and spent many weekends chauffeuring teens to the Appleton Y Terrors Den or driving a group to an out-of-town Appleton West basketball game. She taught a sex education class at the Congregational Church and encouraged openness in answering teenagers' questions about sex, dating and romance.
Muriel loved words, books and ideas, and she fostered that curiosity and creativity in her children. After her children were grown, she attended UW-Oshkosh and majored in anthropology.
The Dafoes moved from Appleton to Orlando, Florida, to be closer to two daughters and seven grandchildren in that area. Muriel was an active member of Orlando Community Church for many years.
She leaves her husband of 70 years, William Dafoe, Orlando, Fla; children Barbara (Ralph) Whitehead, Northampton, Mass; Nancy (John) Christiansen, Orlando, Fla; Diane (Daniel) Fredrickson, Runnemede, N.J.; Donald (Sahara) Dafoe, Santa Monica, Calif; Richard Dafoe, Dallas, Tex; Jane (Dick) Lambie, Moundsville, W.Va; Willem (Giada) Dafoe, Rome, Italy and NY, NY; and Sarah (David) Holbrook, Orlando, Fla; 24 grandchildren; and 16 great-grandchildren, and three more on the way. Her granddaughter, Faye Marie Fredrickson, preceded her in death.
Published in Appleton Post-Crescent on Sept. 20, 2012
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