Jean Zoerheide, age 99, the surviving spouse of the Reverend Robert Zoerheide, died 11 August 2018 in Baltimore, Maryland. She was born Jean Kenyon Spaulding on 1 April 1919 and married Robert in 1937. They remained together until his death in 2003. During their 66 years, he owned a butcher shop with his brother, earned a Batchelor’s degree from Western Michigan College and an MDiv from Meadville Lombard Theology School. Jean maintained the home and raised their four children while Bob worked for USC with Japanese American internees during WWII and with Czechoslovakian Unitarians after the war.
They returned to the U.S., where he served churches in Peterborough, New Hampshire, Syracuse, New York, and Bethesda, Maryland before being called to First Unitarian Church in Baltimore in 1978.
Jean became active with the UU Women’s Federation and helped to draft and promote The Women and Religion Resolution which was passed by General Assembly in 1977. In 1978, Jean was appointed to the Continental Women and Religion Committee, and in 1979 she was one of the organizers of the first conference, titled “Beyond This Time,” which produced manuals of worship services, workshop ideas, and educational sessions to work on implementing the 1977 resolution within Unitarian Universalism. At the Women and Religion Convocation on Feminist Theology in 1980, she was one of the eight women who brought water to the first Water Ritual.
After their retirement, Jean and Bob became Caring Contact people in the Joseph Priestley district for UURMaPA. Jean continued in that role for a couple years after Bob’s death in 2003.
In addition to her husband, Jean was predeceased by their daughter, Robyn Reklitis, who died in 1996. She was survived by three of her children, Todd K Zoerheide of Brewer, Maine: Mark E Zoerheide of Alum Bank, Pennsylvania; Vickie J Dykes, who has since also died in December 2020; and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.