John Weicher

March 8, 1938 – December 12, 2024

John Weicher – loving husband and father, loyal friend, notable economist, and dedicated public servant – passed away at Sibley Hospital in the early hours of Thursday, December 12, 2024, with his children after a 48-hour hospitalization. His children, Jean and John V., and his daughter-in-law, Laurie, had been standing vigil during his final hours. He was predeceased by his wife of 49 years, Alice Weicher, in 2022. He was 86 years old.

He will be remembered for his deep love of his family, his keen intellect, his prodigious memory, his lasting friendships, his strong sense of personal ethics, his faithful membership in Chevy Chase Presbyterian Church, and his professional work spanning over 55 years as an economist. He loved baseball, the Chicago White Sox in particular, ice cream, literature, history, and his grandchildren, Tate and Lucy.

John was born in Chicago, Illinois to John Weicher, Jr., and Ruth Weicher (nee Waits), their only child. His parents divorced when he was still a child, and from then on, he lived with his mother in the South Shore neighborhood of the city. He went to many White Sox games, and he enjoyed visiting his Waits cousins, aunts and uncles. He graduated from South Shore High School in the spring of 1955.

In high school he wrote for the school paper, which he continued to do as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, whence he graduated in 1959. After a year in journalism in Washington, DC, he entered the PhD. program for economics at the University of Chicago. He concentrated on the field of housing, in part to understand the changing landscape of his hometown in the 1950s and 1960s, and he graduated with his doctorate in the field in 1965. He took a teaching position at the University of California at Irvine. After a few years, he was hired onto faculty of Ohio State University, where he taught, published, and received tenure, and more importantly, met Alice, a graduate student of his office mate Ben Laden. Ben and his wife Sue Laden became lifelong friends. John and Alice married in 1972, and later had John V. and Jean. John and Alice had a loving and respectful marriage, spanning time in Columbus, Ohio, and then many years in Washington, spanning many phases of life.

John took a yearlong leave of absence in the early '70s to work for the federal government in Washington DC. After returning to Ohio, they moved permanently to Washington in 1974, taking a position in the Ford Administration. John served in the Ford, Regan, G. H. W. Bush and G. W. Bush administrations, in the Office of Management and Budget, the General Accounting Office and in particular the Department of Housing and Urban Development, where he was the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) commissioner in the second Bush administration. In addition to his work in government agencies, he managed research projects in policy research institutes, including the Urban Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Hudson Institute. From 2007 to 2008 he chaired the Committee to Evaluate the Research Plan of the Department of Housing and Urban Development of the National Research Council; he had also been a member of the Millennium Housing Commission, the Census Advisory Committee on Population Statistics, and the Committee on Urban Policy of the National Research Council. He is the author or editor of fourteen books, and the author of numerous popular and scholarly articles. His latest book was Housing Policy At A Crossroads: The Why, How, And Who Of Assistance Programs. He was chief author of Rebuilding the Research Capacity at HUD, the report of the National Research Council Committee.

At home, he enjoyed the theater with his family and the White Sox with his son, making a pilgrimage together to see them play in a three-game homestand for over 20 years. He was famous for last-minute Christmas shopping after Alice thought they already had enough presents. He was an active member of Chevy Chase Presbyterian Church for almost 41 years, serving as an ordained elder, on the finance administration committee, and teaching the Bible study class for many years.

John is preceded in death by his parents, Ruth Waits Weicher and John Weicher, Jr., and his wife, Alice Landt Weicher. He is mourned by his daughter, Jean Weicher, his son and daughter-in-law, John V. L. Weicher and Laurie Taylor Weicher, his grandchildren, Tate and Lucy Weicher, and his personal assistant, Aisha Bah.

A celebration of John's life and the completion of his baptism will be held at Chevy Chase Presbyterian Church on Friday, January 31, at 11 a.m., with a reception to follow. He will be buried next to Alice at Spring Grove cemetery in Cincinnati, Ohio.