Jeanne Hogue Recht

OCT 19, 1919-JAN 26, 2013 Dear God, Please welcome Jeanne Recht with your tender mercies. I think she might need a hug. She is a complicated woman, Lord. Adventure is her middle name. She would have us ride a mattress down the staircase for fun. Again and again. She'd awaken us in the middle of the night with a whisper in our ear, "Wake up. We're going to New York." Then she would load all five of us kids in a two-seater Jag to make the four-hour drive from Dover, PA, to NYC. She never knew what the next day held. Spontaneous. Funny. Bright. Curious. Athletic yet clumsy. A devout Southern Baptist who would dance the night away. A very accomplished organist who played songs from memory in our living roomthey would ring across the mountainside. A high school graduate who could listen to a medical lecture and explain it to us in detail that night. A seamstress who would start a dress late at night, without a pattern, and wear it to a wedding the next day. Multi-faceted. Talented. And complicated. She loved to drive and drove right up until her stroke. Her favorite activity was "getting lost." She would choose a road she had never been down and keep making turns to see where she'd end up. Sometimes she would drive for days. Alone. We never knew what Mom was driving from or driving towards. She liked to present herself as a different person depending on the crowd she was meeting. Cards would come from people none of us had ever met. And the secrets of her trips were her own. She is a complicated woman, Lord. Please receive her and keep her. Jeanne, of Newville, PA, was born Elda Jeanne Hogue in Harrisburg, PA, on October 19, 1919. She graduated from Altoona High School. She married John M. Recht, MD, on June 25, 1944, and was married for 28 years. She never remarried. She is survived by children Joan Wolf (Tom) of Carlisle, PA; John, Jr. (Amy) of Camano Island, WA; Jane of CT; James of CT; and Jan Stogsdill (Mark) of Shalimar, FL; four grandchildren: Thom, Sarah, Emma, and Jean-Paul; and 2 great grandchildren: Zach and Alex; as well as a great number of loving nieces and nephews-with the exception of the one who kept Mom's post-stroke condition a secret for the last 10 days of her life, stealing any opportunity for her to be with her loved ones. I hope the contents of her apartment and bank accounts are reward enough-for there is simply nothing more to be taken from us. Since we did not get to say goodbye to you before you set out on your last road trip: Bon voyage, Mom, Aunt Jeanne, Grandma, and Great Grandma. Bon Voyage.