Louise McClendon Obituary

Louise Julie Doehring McClendon passed away February 22, 2026, at the age of 90, in Lawrence, Kansas, her home for nearly 60 years. She and her twin brother Frederick were born on June 6, 1935, in Mobile, Alabama to German immigrants, Charlotte Boettcher and Dr. Erich Doehring.

In the spring of 1936, Charlotte chose to return to Germany with Louise and her two brothers. That decision would profoundly affect the course of Louise's life. She suffered what all children suffer in war. She went hungry, did without, and endured 29 air raids over Berlin. On November 22, 1943, 764 RAF planes dropped 2,300 tons of incendiary explosives in 30 minutes. As intended, it caused a firestorm. Eyewitnesses called it 'a vision of the Apocalypse'. It melted the asphalt. 180,000 people were made homeless, including 8-year-old Louise.

Her father Erich, still in Mobile, lost contact with his children and played every card imaginable to find them. He persuaded the U.S. Secretary of State to formally request a report on the welfare and whereabouts of his children. Senator Lister Hill of Alabama expressed a special interest in the case and a parallel request was filed through the British Red Cross.

As he searched for Louise and her brothers, they sat in Neustrelitz with the Red Army closing in. The advance of the 2nd Belorussian Front was marked by such extreme violence and retaliatory brutality that 681 residents of Neustrelitz, about 1 in 20 people, chose to commit suicide rather than face them when they arrived on April 30th, 1945. Louise was not yet 10 years old. She later said that she knew the war was over when the Russians kicked in the basement door.

Her older brother, Carl, emigrated on a US transport ship for displaced persons in 1947, just before Stalin began to blockade all land routes out of what would become East Germany. In early 1948, Louise, Fred and Charlotte had to make their way to West Berlin just as the Iron Curtain was descending. In the fall of that year, at the age of 13, Louise was reunited with her father. After some years in Berlin and following her brothers, she finally returned to her father's home in Montrose, Alabama in 1955.

Louise had a lifelong love of travel. She first toured Europe with her father in 1951 and returned several times on her own. She explored South America and road-tripped across the United States, living on both coasts before taking root in Kansas to raise her family.

She taught her sons to love and value nature. As the mother of Cub Scouts, she wanted to increase their appreciation of food by learning to grow it for themselves. Working with other Scouting parents, they farmed a large garden plot together, including okra, tomatoes, carrots and corn. She surrounded herself with plants and they gave her a great deal of joy.

Louise was also passionate about cooking and many of her recipes will long outlive her, especially her lemon poundcake. She baked a very large gingerbread house every Christmas, always carefully decorated with icing and candies, one for each of her sons to share with his elementary school class.

She also valued education, perhaps all the more for having her own so disrupted by the war. She completed her secondary education in Berlin at Rheingau Gymnasium, attended Spring Hill College in Mobile, then transferred to Sophie Newcomb College at Tulane University, before taking her junior year abroad at The Sorbonne. She received her bachelor's degree in 1959 and went on to receive a master's degree from The University of California, Berkeley in 1966, both in Germanic Studies. She studied international trade and gerontology at the University of Kansas and later created the Louise Julie Doehring McClendon Scholarship in Gerontology to support others in their studies.

Louise was preceded in death by her beloved father Erich, her mother Charlotte, and her brothers, Carl and Frederick. She is survived by the father of her children, James Fred McClendon, Jr.; their sons, Brian, Norman, and Douglas; and her granddaughter, Ariel.