Thelma Van Norte

Thelma Augostat played violin in a trio as a young woman.^[4][7] She became medical records librarian at a hospital in Macon, Georgia in 1959.^[8] There, Van Norte established a training program for blind medical transcriptionists.^[9] She was also a consultant to USAID, and spent time in British Guiana, teaching and establishing a medical records library at a hospital for leprosy patients.^[10] In the 1970s, she worked on contacting families of deceased Central State Hospital patients. "We just hunt, hunt, hunt until we get a clue," she explained in a 1973 newspaper article.^[11]

Van Norte received the 1966 Georgia State Public Personnel Award,^[12][13] and the National Public Personnel Award from the President's Committee on Employment of the Handicapped.^[14] The national award was presented to her by actor Harold Russell at a banquet in Milwaukee.^[1][5]

Thelma Augostat married physician William M. Schindledecker in 1932;^[15] they had two sons, Samuel and Robert, and divorced in 1946. She married again, to Lloyd F. Van Norte, before 1950. He was postmaster of Edisto Island, South Carolina.^[4] She died in 1985, at the age of 73, at a hospital in Sandersville, Georgia.^[6][16]