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November 28 | Ann Blasberg
Ann Blasberg, the second woman to receive a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Eden and the second woman ordained in the Evangelical and Reformed Church, was born in Owensboro, Kentucky on Nov. 28, 1922.
Anna R. Blasberg was born into an Evangelical Synod of North America family that included seven generations of clergy. Her father, Daniel Blasberg, the son of the Rev. Wilhelm Blasberg, graduated from Elmhurst (1912) and Eden (1915) and pastored in Illinois and Kentucky. Anne Blasberg graduated from Eden in 1949 after completing the B.D. program in an expedited two years of study, plus one summer session at Union Seminary in New York.
Blasberg was ordained in 1949 at Memorial Evangelical and Reformed Church in Madison, Wisconsin and called to work in campus ministry at the University of Wisconsin. After her work at UW, she served as Regional Secretary for the Student Christian Movement in the Middle Atlantic Region (1951-1955) and completed an STM at Yale Divinity School (1955). She was Minister of Christian Education at Bethany UCC in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, 1955-1958; pastor of St. Peter’s UCC, Chester Springs, Pennsylvania, 1958-1963; associate pastor at Plymouth Congregation, Miami, Florida, 1963-1969; associate pastor at Community Church, Miami, Florida, 1982-1984; and pastor of Robertson Memorial, Miami, Florida, 1988-1990. She received a Doctor of Ministry degree from Eden in 1982.
Because of the resistance she experienced as a woman pastor after moving to Florida, Blasberg became more involved in community mental health. She was the Executive Director of the Mental Health Association of Dade County, 1971–1986, and the Counseling Ministry of South Florida, a pastoral care center, for ten years.
In 1958, Blasberg married Robert Cordray. Following his death in 1975, she married Jack Thornton in 1990. The Reverend Doctor Ann B. Cordray-Thornton died on April 10, 1997, in Miami, Florida.
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