To Touch With Love

Dorothy Foreman German was born October 1, 1917 to George and Naomi Foreman in Pawnee, Missouri, joining older sister, Ruby. She and her family lived in a four room farmhouse where she spent twenty happy years enjoying all the fun and work of a farming family. Her childhood was spent as an active outdoor girl learning all she could about nature.

From a very young age, her parents encouraged music and poem recitation. There were many opportunities to "perform" at church picnics and family/ neighborhood gatherings. Attending a one-room country school, she graduated from the eighth grade in 1931 with the highest honors in the district. Ribbon, her horse, took her to high school in Hatfield, Missouri daily, almost 6 miles each way. During those four years, she participated in school plays and assembly programs receiving many accolades and graduating as Valedictorian of her senior class.

September 25, 1937, was her wedding day to Elden Newell German on September 25, 1937. This continued her life on a farm for almost twenty more years. It was during the first year of her marriage when she began to write. Dorothy enjoyed singing with her mother so much, the rhythms continued onto paper. It was Mother's Day 1938 when she had no money for a gift that she penned her first poem for her beloved mother. The title? "Mom". She sent this poem to a homemaker's radio program in Shenandoah, IA where it was read over the airwaves by Adella Shoemaker.

In 1956, Elden and Dorothy moved their two young girls to central Iowa where she now resides. Dorothy continued writing and was urged by friends to join a writer's workshop. She felt she would be inferior to all those college graduates, but she attended anyway. It was the encouragement of these fellow writers that pressed her on.

She has written over 150 poems with various subject matters and for several different occasions. Many of us have enjoyed Christmas poems from her for more than 35 years. Many more hav