Obituary of Ilse Maria Ward

1924-2017 Ilse Maria Kuss Ward, 93, of St. Paul, MN, died August 13, 2017 at Ramsey County Care Center in St. Paul. Ilse was born in Leipzig, Germany, on March 30, 1924, the first-born child of Paul Max and Helene Maria Thielmann Kuss. Ilse was reared and educated in the small town of Meiningen, in the German state of Thuringia. Her childhood dreams of becoming an interior decorator were changed with the advent of the Third Reich under Chancellor Adolf Hitler, where she was conscripted into military support service as a nurse during the years of World War II. After the war, when Germany was divided up among the allied powers, her family found themselves to be living in the newly-created nation of East Germany, which was under Russian control. Ilse was the first of her family to cross the border under cover of night and immigrate to the United States in 1952 with the underwriting of an uncle and family who were already living in Indiana, and were transferred by his employer to Minneapolis, Minnesota. Ilse began her new life in America by doing domestic work for a family in Hopkins, and eventually obtained employment as a nurse’s aide at Northwestern Hospital, where her three children were later born. In 1955, she married John Lester Ward, a young minister who had come to Minnesota from Illinois, and introduced Ilse and her family to a new community of friends in the Pentecostal church. To this union were born three children- John Harrison Ward II in 1956, Heidimarie Elisabeth Ward in 1962 and Rolf Gerhard Ward in 1965. Ilse was preceded in death by her husband John Lester in 2006. She is survived by her brother Reverend Wolfgang Gerhard Kuss of Woodbury, her children, son John’s wife Faith of Becker, Mississippi, son Rolf’s wife Sheila of Woodbury; her grandchildren Jonathan Matthew Ward of Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Alicia Marie Ward of Tupelo, Mississippi, and Eric Christian Ward and AnnMarie Grace Ward of Woodbury. We also honor her cousin, Nancy Presher Redmond, of Fridley, who served as Ilse’s maid-of-honor, along with a host of friends and acquaintances made over the years that mourn her loss and celebrate her home-going.