Johanna L. Loper Scholarship in Natural Sciences

Johanna Loper was born as Johanna Louise Merkel on March 16, 1910, in New York City to parents who had immigrated to America from the Alsace region of Germany. Growing up, she lived and attended school on the lower east side of Manhattan. Without finishing high school, Miss Merkel attended a business school and finished at the top of her class. She worked for several business firms in New York City, where she met Gerald Loper, a young man from Kansas who was serving in the Navy on the battleship Texas. The ship was stationed in New York. The two married in 1930 and began their family, eventually relocating to Wichita in 1937 where Mr. Loper returned to work for his family’s grocery business.

In 1952, Mrs. Loper took the position of administrative assistant to the University of Wichita Board of Trustees. She worked first with Glen Gardner and later with Dick Reidenbaugh. In the early 1960s, she worked on the campaign to bring the school into the state system as Wichita State University, which occurred in 1964.

Mrs. Loper retired and moved to Florida with her husband in 1972, but moved back a few years later. A great volunteer, she contributed more than 17,000 hours of volunteer time to Via Christi Medical Center. Mrs. Loper passed away at the age of 97 in 2007. Her children Skip and Joyce Loper established the Johanna L. Loper Scholarship in Natural Sciences in honor of her loyalty to and years of work for WSU.