Dorthy Oh Sook

OH SOOK, DOROTHY (LEE), 88, born September 10, 1932, in Gangwon Province, South Korea, died February 4, 2021 in Asheville, NC. She was member of the Fletcher Church. During the era when Japan occupied Korea, She became a Seventh-day Adventist through her brother who later became a prominent pastor. She graduated from Ewha Girl’s High School, one of the elite schools in Seoul. She studied linguistics at Seoul National University. She attended the seminary at Samyook College and served the church as an educator for more than 20 years in Korea, including as an English teacher at Seoul Samyook Academy and Adventist Nursing School. Later she was a Hebrew instructor in the theology department. In 1958, at age 25, she married a seminary student, Jae Yoon Oh. She came to the United States in 1961, and her husband attended graduate school at Andrews University. They returned to Korea and continued their work at Adventist schools. Having no biological children of their own, they regarded their students as their family.

In 1975, the couple immigrated to the United States. She studied nursing at Loma Linda University and became an ICU nurse. As a pastor-nurse duo, they planted and served many Korean churches in Spokane, WA, Denver, CO, Atlanta, GA, and Chicago, IL, over the next two decades. They found their retirement home in 1997 in Fletcher, NC, but even during their retirement years, they organized and ministered to the Korean Asheville Group, which they served for 18 years. After her husband’s death in 2015, her last five and half years were the continuation of an active lifestyle, full of service and cheerfulness.