Jean Ahlness

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Jean Ahlness Stebinger graduated from Concordia in 1943

Jean Ahlness was born in 1922 in Rhame, ND. She was a student at Concordia College until she graduated in 1943 in the middle of World War II. Ahlness wanted to go overseas to help with the war effort. She first took a job at the General Mills Corporation in Minneapolis, MN. Her job was organizing advertising campaigns for Wheaties cereal. She answered an ad for a job with the American embassies in North Africa. She was accepted into the program and sent to Washington D.C. for 6 months of training with the State Department. She was one of 25 women in the program. She was taught how to handle passports and visas, how to code and decode messages, and work with a cipher machine. Ahlness was assigned to the embassy in Cairo, Egypt. She received a letter of commendation from the Secretary of State for her work in arranging a meeting between President Franklin Roosevelt, King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia, King Farouk of Egypt, and Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia. In 1945 she married Arnold Stebinger, a representative from Mobil Oil Co. who assisted in refueling planes at the American Air Force Base in Cairo. The couple lived in Beirut, Lebanon from 1947 to 1950, where Jean organized refugee relief for Palestinian Arabs. They also lived in England, New York, Indonesia, Columbia, and South Carolina. While in South Carolina, Jean started the Nationwide Medical Recruiters which included 7,000 hospitals on its mailing list. Arnold died in 2003 after a long battle with Parkinson's disease. Ahlness currently lives in Middletown, Connecticut. She has 3 children and 3 grandchildren (15).