Lois Aller Obituary
Lois Nickchen Aller was born on May 29, 1931 in Milwaukee, WI. She graduated from Holy Angels High School a year early. She graduated from Marquette University in 1952. She majored in mathematics and German and minored in chemistry. While at Marquette she played in the University band where she met her husband Donald Aller. Lois Aller began playing music early and played violin in the Catholic Youth Symphony Orchestra. She continued to play music her whole life. She played French horn at Marquette and continued in the Oconomowoc American Legion Band until around 2010. She had been playing drum with the Samuel Jones English Civil War reenacting group, including a reenactment in Naseby, England. She has also been a drummer with a couple of reenactment groups doing the American Revolutionary War. She came out in our present reenacting regiment Lauzun's Legion in Vendome, France in 1989.
As much as Lois Aller loved music, her real love and gift was horses. Since she was 10 years old she loved horses. She got her first horse, Student Prince, in 1955. She and her Saddlebred horse won several state and national championships in English Pleasure. In 1962, she began training Student Prince in dressage. In 1968 she tried out for the Olympics. Student Prince died and she tried out again with her second horse Mercury. In 1970 she and several of her friends in the horse world founded the Wisconsin Dressage Association which a few years later added Cross Country. The organization still exists today and dressage has spread across the state. Lois Aller taught riding up to a couple of months ago. Lois taught chemistry for her training and then math and German for several years at Divine Savior (now Divine Savior Holy Angels) until she was making more money teaching riding.
She was an active person! Lois was way ahead of her time in everything she did. She was on a CYO volleyball team and an avid sailor. She fenced in college and continued until recently. She did ballroom dancing and Irish step dancing at Cashel Dennehy adult class.
She helped build their house on Blackhawk Drive with her father and brother Roy. She built the barn at the farm she resided at since 1992 with her husband Donald and her daughter Bonnie. Her son Bruce helped as well and later moved in.
She was preceded in death by her mother Mavelle Van de Kamp, her father Paul H. Nickechen, her brother Roy (Joanie Shelso), her brother Gordon, her sister-in-law Phyllis, and her brothers-in-law Robert Aller, Charles Aller, and Richard Aller. She is survived by her sister Ruth (Leonard) Schacht, her son Bruce Aller, her daughter Bonnie Aller, many nieces, nephews, other family members, and friends.
