There is a photograph of Naomi that has come to mean more to me with every passing year. She is a young nurse in Buckhorn, Kentucky, crossing a wooden swinging bridge with a wheelbarrow and nursing supplies. A patient is waiting on the other side.
I did not know her then. But after forty-five years as her husband, I recognize something familiar in that picture: her willingness to bring care to someone who needed it.
That willingness took many forms throughout her life. Sometimes it meant a nursing visit up a Kentucky holler. Sometimes it meant welcoming a child into our home, listening to a woman in jail, praying with a grieving family, or being present for our own children.
I want our children, grandchildren, and those who come after them to know this woman we called Nomi. More than that, I want them to know the Jesus she trusted. Naomi was an imperfect person who needed His grace, as we all do. Her story matters because it helps us see what faith can look like in an ordinary human life.
Roots of Faith and Providence
Naomi Helen Koerwitz was born on February 5, 1949, in Niles, Michigan, to Norman and Helen Koerwitz. She grew up in a Christian family where faith was practiced at home as well as at church. Behind her life were earlier generations, including her grandmother Helen Oppenheimer Weyland, whose journey from Europe to America became an important part of our family story. Researching that history has reminded me how much we receive from people whose lives began long before ours.
Her older sister Gretchen, a nurse herself, was another important influence. I believe their close relationship helped nurture Naomi’s interest in nursing. Her teenage service as a hospital candy striper was an early opportunity to encounter the needs of patients, years before nursing became her profession.
Naomi went on to study nursing at Wisconsin State University–Eau Claire, graduating in 1971. Her friend and college roommate Lauri Lemke Thompson remembered something more personal than a graduation date: Naomi would not pull the bedcovers over herself until she had said her prayers. They attended church together, and later each experienced a renewed closeness to Jesus through campus Christian ministries—Lauri through Campus Crusade and Naomi through InterVarsity.
Faith became something they wanted to carry into the world with their education.
Naomi also opened her home for Christian fellowship. A December 1971 article in the campus newspaper, The Spectator, identified her home as a meeting place for Bible studies. Friends remember the community around the House of David and the women’s apartment affectionately called the House of David Annex.
Those memories include prayer and serious conversations, but also laughter and silliness. Randy Berdal recalled the women enjoying themselves so much that the young men teased them about their frivolity—a joke that lasted for decades. I am glad those memories survive. They help us remember a young woman who enjoyed life and friendship, alongside the nurse and mother she became.
A Prayer That Led to Buckhorn
After graduation, Naomi briefly taught nursing before moving into hospital and public-health work. Near Augusta, Wisconsin, she found satisfaction in visiting people in their homes and using her nursing skills in a rural community.
She also found the winters very cold.
In an account she wrote using the name Ann, she prayed, “Please let this be my last winter in all this cold and snow.” Her thoughts went further: “If I like this type of nursing so well, why not move to an even remoter area where there is a greater need for nurses.”
She wanted to serve, but she was also thinking about her family. Her mother had developed kidney disease and was on dialysis, and Naomi wanted to remain within a day or two’s drive of home. These were practical decisions made with prayer, affection, and uncertainty. She did not have the whole future mapped out.
Naomi and Lucille: Sisters in the Lord
Her path led to Buckhorn, Kentucky, where she spent three years living and working alongside nurse-midwife Lucille LeBeau.
With her Jeep, Naomi traveled the winding roads into the hollers to visit families, including mothers and babies. Public-health nursing brought her into people’s daily circumstances, where distance and difficult roads could make medical care hard to reach. On one winter visit, her Jeep went off the road and a logging truck helped pull it back.
Then there was the bridge.
The photograph records her crossing to visit Verna Farler in 1976. I cannot know what Naomi thought as she walked across or everything that happened during the visit. But the photograph preserves the essential fact: a patient needed care, and Naomi found a way to reach her.
Lucille shared those years of work and daily life. I am grateful for her friendship with Naomi and believe that serving together helped shape the woman I later knew. We cannot reconstruct every conversation or lesson. We can recognize that their shared season mattered.
A Life of Nursing and Compassionate Service
When Naomi’s three-year assignment ended, she returned to Wisconsin. Her work continued through hospitals, home-care agencies, and public health, including more than fifteen years with the North Shore Health Department. Her colleagues remembered a competent nurse, a practical problem solver, a good listener, and a woman with a sharp sense of humor. They also remembered her habit of counting her blessings and thanking God before falling asleep.
When Two Snowflakes Become One
Naomi and I began dating in October 1978 and married at Divine Shepherd Lutheran Church on April 21, 1979.
Before accepting my proposal, she told me she had polycystic kidney disease. I did not yet understand all that might mean for our future. I knew that I loved her and wanted to share my life with her.
I have described us as two snowflakes—two people shaped by very different experiences, brought together into one shared life. Looking back, I see God’s providence in our meeting. Neither of us could have understood then all the joys, responsibilities, disappointments, and opportunities ahead.
Adoption: The Family God Brought Together
Our family grew through the adoption of Michael, Peter, and Ami—all within eight months. Michael was seven, Peter was four, and Ami was six days old when she came into our care. They were our children, and raising them became a central part of our life together.
My Storyworth book, Faith – Vision – Service, preserves how that family began. After we had been married about a year without having birth children, we explored medical questions and adoption possibilities. We read, attended meetings, spoke with people, and took part in a nine-week preparation group through Lutheran Social Services. Several possibilities came to nothing. At times, we wondered whether we would ever become parents.
Then Naomi received a call from our social worker: two Korean brothers were available. We agreed to welcome them and began the paperwork. After their pictures arrived, another call brought heartbreaking news. We had been married only two and a half years, and we were told the requirement was three. Already, in our hearts, these were our boys.
I called the social worker again. She could offer no assurance, but she spoke of her own adoption experience and her belief in prayer. Our Thursday-night home Bible study prayed with us. The following Monday, she called to say the boys would be coming. On October 19, we met Michael and Peter at the airport in Minneapolis.
I do not know every administrative detail behind that change. I remember the disappointment, the prayers, and the joy of finally meeting our sons. Their naturalization day, April 11, 1984, became another milestone preserved in our family photographs.
About six months after the boys arrived, we received an unexpected call from a young woman in northern Wisconsin asking whether we would consider adopting her baby. We were content with our two sons and had stopped looking for an infant. How had she even heard about us?
Earlier, we had printed one hundred letters describing ourselves and our hope to adopt. We had reconsidered that approach and put ninety-seven copies away. Only three had gone to friends. We had almost forgotten them. Somehow, one reached a Christian crisis pregnancy counseling clinic, where this young woman saw our picture and letter.
After more conversations, prayer, and consideration of how another child would affect our sons, Naomi and I took the boys to a nearby park to talk about a possible baby brother or sister. They welcomed the idea.
My book recalls that changes in Wisconsin’s adoption procedures also helped us feel able to proceed. These were the circumstances of our adoption at that time. Above all, we wanted the decision to be the birth mother’s own, without pressure from us.
I remember waiting with Naomi in a small room without windows while the court proceedings took place. Then a good friend of Ami’s birth mother placed Ami in our arms.
A few letters, a telephone call, conversations, prayer, and decisions made by several people had become part of our daughter’s story. Looking back, I see God’s providence in those events. I also remember that becoming parents meant accepting responsibilities we were only beginning to understand.
Motherhood involved much more than welcoming them home. It meant meals, school days, questions, disagreements, encouragement, worry, forgiveness, and prayer. Peter remembered cooking with Naomi, licking brownie batter from a spatula, and learning to make omelets her way. Ami remembered her mother walking beside her through the drama and joy of growing up, and later expressed her gratitude for Naomi’s choice to be her mom.
Those everyday memories belong beside the bridge photograph. They show another place where love became practical and personal.
Adoption also connected Naomi with other families. Debbie Bailey remembered meeting her through Resolve, an infertility support organization where Naomi served on the board. Their friendship grew as Debbie and her husband pursued adoption from Korea. Debbie also remembered Naomi’s patient invitations to Bible study and the part that friendship played in her coming to faith in Jesus.
Our involvement in infertility support, including OURs, belonged to this wider concern for people hoping to become parents. We knew that questions about children and family could carry deep longing and pain.
Our experience also influenced my studies at Trinity. In 1985, I worked with Frank Block of Love Basket on an adoption research project, sending a survey to more than two hundred families who had adopted children from India. Its purpose was to address concerns about the children’s experiences, including racial prejudice. This was my project, rather than Naomi’s nursing work, but it grew from the family life we shared and our concern for other adoptive families.
Another adoption story came through Randy and Judy Berdal. Randy recalled that in 1988 Gretchen brought a very sick infant girl from Mexico to Wisconsin. During a visit to Randy and Judy, Naomi asked whether they were interested in a little girl. That conversation became part of the story of their adopting Aylana.
Randy’s remembrance acknowledges difficult years as well as the joy of the daughter they loved. It is a reminder that adoption begins a lifelong relationship, with responsibilities and challenges as well as blessing. Naomi had a part in bringing that family together.
Heal the Children: Making Room in Our Home
Our home also welcomed children through the ministry remembered in our family posts as Heal the Children. These children came for medical care; hosting them was a different responsibility from adoption. Naomi’s nursing experience and our family’s hospitality helped us care for children far from their own homes.
My Storyworth book gives more detail about Juan Carlos, whose name is recorded there as Juan Carlos Moscosco. He came from Mexico for hand surgery, and we hosted him on two separate occasions. One family photograph dates from December 1984 and places him alongside Michael, Peter, and Ami.
During his second stay, Juan attended St. John’s Lutheran Church School. In the book I wondered whether that visit lasted about nine months, so I cannot give an exact duration. What the memory makes clear is that caring for him involved the routines of home and school as well as medical treatment. A photograph with Grandma Dassow preserves another family connection during his time with us.
Another photograph shows Michael holding a Korean child captioned “Jung Hi” in my book. She had come for open-heart surgery. I recalled hosting her for perhaps a week and remembered that she even rode a camel after her surgery. The exact length of her stay is uncertain, but that cheerful detail has stayed with me.
These children had families and histories of their own. For a time, our responsibility was to make room for them and help provide the care they needed. Naomi’s nursing skills were valuable, and the whole household participated in welcoming them.
Bob and Barb Christian preserved another specific memory. In early 1993, a team traveled to Foundation for His Ministry in Baja California, Mexico. A one-year-old girl had been in Milwaukee for cleft lip and palate repair, and the team helped return her to her family near the ministry campus. Naomi served as the connection between the family who had cared for the baby in Milwaukee and the traveling team.
Her part in that story was practical: helping people work together so a child could receive treatment and return home.
Serving Together as a Team
Years later, our written family mission statement expressed the conviction behind opening our home: we had received it from God and wanted to use it for His glory. It also acknowledged that we needed grace and forgiveness ourselves. I cannot say how fully I communicated every part of that statement to our children. I can say that hospitality and service were things Naomi and I wanted our family to experience together. Our mission trips to Baja and Oaxaca, and our support for children through Foundation for His Ministry, provided other ways to participate in work larger than our own household.
Much of Naomi’s service happened closer to home. At Eastbrook Church she helped with food-pantry registration, welcome ministries, prayer, and conversations about people’s gifts and opportunities to serve. Through our church communities—Divine Shepherd, Eastbrook, and later Alliance Bible Church—we shared fellowship, Bible studies, meals, and friendships that lasted for years.
Naomi also served in the women’s jail ministry in Ozaukee County, including Saturday Bible studies and involvement with Alpha. A fellow volunteer remembered how Naomi helped her develop confidence in that work. During the pandemic, Naomi missed the in-person ministry and looked forward to a possible Alpha group by Zoom, even while learning the technology herself.
Together, we responded to fires through the Red Cross and served as volunteer chaplains with The Salvation Army. Chaplaincy brought us alongside people experiencing sudden death, violence, overdose, and other crises. Often, the most useful things we could offer were attention, a listening ear, and prayer when welcomed.
The Salvation Army’s tribute recorded 568.5 volunteer hours for Naomi, including crisis support, community prayer vigils, Toy Shop distribution, Christmas Family Feast, and Feed the Kids. It identified her last recorded volunteer activity as Feed the Kids on August 16, 2024.
Those hours document a portion of her service. They cannot measure the meaning of a particular conversation or the comfort someone received. I am thankful for the record and for the people who served beside her.
PKD, Dialysis, and Becoming Care Partners
Eventually, Naomi’s own health required increasing care. Kidney disease and dialysis became part of our daily life. The woman who had spent so many years nursing others also needed help herself.
We learned to think of ourselves as Care Partners. Training, treatments, appointments, medical decisions, ordinary routines, and prayer became shared responsibilities. I could not cure her disease. I could remain beside her as her husband.
These years were difficult. Faith did not remove suffering, and love did not give us control over what happened. It helped us keep walking together through circumstances we would never have chosen.
Finishing the Race with Faith
Naomi died on November 8, 2024, surrounded by family. I miss her presence, her companionship, and the ordinary conversations that belonged to our days. My hope that she is with Jesus does not take away that grief. It gives me someone to trust within it.
A Story Still Being Written
In October 2026, I returned to the bridge near Buckhorn. Fifty years after Naomi’s patient visit, I stood where she had once walked. I ventured only a short distance onto it, conscious of my age and of being there alone.
Looking at that crossing, I felt closer to a part of her life I had never shared. I also found myself thinking about the opportunities still before me.
That is why I am preserving these stories for our family. Some of you knew Naomi well. Others may know her only through photographs, words, and memories handed down. Our family was formed through adoption, and the legacy I hope to pass along is one of love, faith, and belonging.
What Naomi’s Life Teaches Me
Naomi did not know every person her life would touch. Neither can we measure every consequence of a kindness, an invitation, a prayer, or a door opened to someone in need.
We can remember what she did. We can give thanks for the people who helped shape her. And we can consider the Savior she sought to follow.
The young nurse crossed a bridge to reach one patient. The mother cared for her children. The hostess made room at the table. The volunteer listened to a hurting person. Through these particular acts, faith became visible.
May Christ Become More
My prayer for those who read her story is that you will come to know Nomi—and that, through knowing something of her life, you will want to know Jesus for yourselves.
Then consider the people He has placed within your reach, and the care you can offer today.
