Encyclopedia Dubuque
"Encyclopedia Dubuque is the online authority for all things Dubuque, written by the people who know the city best.”
Marshall Cohen—researcher and producer, CNN
Affiliated with the Local History Network of the State Historical Society of Iowa, and the Iowa Museum Association.
HAMMER, Audrey Lowe
HAMMER, Audrey Lowe. (Minneapolis, MN--Dubuque, IA, Dec. 28, 2011). Audrey graduated from Grinnell College in 1952. She met David HAMMER there and they were married in 1953 in the Grinnell College Chapel. She taught school in Kalona, Iowa, while husband finished law school at the University of Iowa. They moved to Dubuque in 1956.
Audrey was very active her entire life with Little Cloud Girl Scout Council. She served as executive director of the Scout office, trained leaders, and worked with thousands of girls in the Dubuque area. She was a PEO sister, volunteered at The United Way, GRAND OPERA HOUSE and acted in local plays and nearly every movie filmed in Dubuque.
In 1965, Audrey helped organize a program called "Operation Friendship," which bused young black children out of the rioting neighborhoods in south Chicago to spend the summer with families in Dubuque. That is how she came to have a third "daughter" named Claudia Clayton Bodley, who came and stayed every summer for seven years.