Allegra Dalton Obituary

Allegra Eve Dalton died Monday, October 21, at University Health Truman Medical Center after being struck by a vehicle while crossing a street in downtown Kansas City, Mo. She was an incomparable person who made an indelible mark on the lives of her family, friends, colleagues, and countless others who she cared for as a nurse, bonded with as a neighbor or through shared interests, or who otherwise came into her orbit. We are devastated by her loss.

Allegra was born April 1, 1965, at Grace New Haven (Conn.) Hospital to Jim and Melissa Woelfel, kicking off nearly 60 years of constant misspelling and mispronunciation of her first and last names. After a year in St. Andrews, Scotland, they moved to Lawrence, Kan., and Jim and Melissa divorced. Jim and Judy Dutton were married in 1968, and Judy adopted Allegra and her older sister Skye; a third sister, Sarah, was born three years later. Growing up, Allegra took ballet for many years, played piano, and sang in school choirs. The family spent her third grade year in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she won a school contest for reciting Robert Burns poetry with the most authentic Scottish accent. In Lawrence, she attended Schwegler Elementary, South Junior High, and Lawrence High (class of 1982), making lifelong friends along the way. Her family grew to include her stepmother, Sarah Trulove, and stepsiblings Ann and Paul, with Jim's remarriage in 1982.

Following coursework at the University of Kansas and Wright Business College, Allegra earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Washburn University in 1989 and worked as a legal secretary, first in Topeka and then in Tulsa, Okla. While living in Tulsa, she decided to pursue nursing, and earned her Bachelor of Science in Nursing at the Langston University School of Nursing in 1994. After graduating, she returned to Kansas, and began her nursing career in Ottawa while living in Lawrence.