Obituary
Durham, NC – Lauree Hersch Meyer, theologian, gardener, teacher, nurturer of soil and relationships, died at home on September 24, 2024, at the age of 90. She was born on July 15, 1934, to Orville and Mabel (Harley) Hersch at the same farmhouse in Manassas, Virginia, where her mother was born.
After high school, Lauree attended Bridgewater College, playing basketball and other sports. After college, she worked throughout the Midwest as a youth minister for the Church of the Brethren, leading work camps, hikes, songs, and other activities. She then worked with Brethren Volunteer Service in Germany as part of ecumenical activities aimed to rebuild trust among people. She was hired to stay on, remaining in Germany six years in total.
Lauree then enrolled at the University of Chicago, earning an MA and PhD from the Divinity School. She worked briefly at Notre Dame and Belmont Abbey, and then spent many years at Bethany Theological Seminary teaching Old Testament and Feminist Theology. She spent the final part of her teaching career at Colgate Rochester Seminary. She taught thought-provoking classes, and was less interested in conveying information or ideas than in engaging people in thinking and conversing.
Lauree exemplified a capacity to neither blindly accept nor blindly react against the structures of power in which we find ourselves, and she empowered others to do the same. From her Anabaptist Pietist roots to a lifetime working in theology, she was able to celebrate and pass down the things she embraced and to compost those things she didn’t. She approached people and power structures with which she disagreed with a desire not to disengage but to use relationship towards transformation or resolution. She did not think of herself as a protestor, but took a stand when needed. In one case this led to the end of her employment with the Church of the Brethren, and inspired this dedication from a colleague’s book: “To Lauree Hersch Meyer, who challenged me to shed my patriarchal ways and become a full human being.”
Everywhere she lived, Lauree took first to tending, cultivating, and enriching the soil, so that it would support life and growth. “Planting is as deeply rooted in me as are our trees in the soil. They need deep roots to be healthy; so do I.” Her yards were full of fruit trees, berry bushes, and gardens. She was an unwitting trendsetter: composting, urban foraging, yard-gardening, and canning dilly beans from the seventies through the end of her life. After Rochester, she “retired” to a 200-acre farm in Rushville, New York, where she gardened much more, raised chickens and guinea hens and ducks and geese, sold at the farmer’s market, took care of several orchards and engaged many friends in communal cidering (in large amounts…all things she loved, she did on large scales).
Lauree’s nurturing of soil was a lived analogue of how she approached relationships and community. In New York as before, she developed new and important friendships, including around two women’s groups and an “unconscious resources” group. After her move to Durham, NC, she continued building relationships, composting, gardening, and cooking and sharing enormous portions of food. She delighted in the community that formed –and the process that formed it–in the newly established Bull City Cohousing community, where she finished her life.
Lauree combined frugality and generosity to an almost absurd degree. She loved and inspired spirited, warm discussions, often around her dinner table – conversations that engaged who we are and how we live. She loved bringing people together, big hugs, and encouraging “good trouble.” She laughed easily, joyfully, and exuberantly (rivaling her famous “Granny Hersch” sneezes in volume). She wore outrageously large necklaces, and either spectacularly beautiful and unusual or spectacularly drab and practical clothing. In the words of a dear friend: “Her mind was scintillating. Her laughter was lyrical. And she saw me, recognized me as me, not as an extension of herself or as the incarnation of some ideal.” She loved whom she loved, and made space for others to do the same.
Surrounded by friends and family, Lauree died clearly and fearlessly. She leaves a magnificent legacy.
Memorial donations may be made to Heifer International. A celebration of Lauree’s wonderful life will be held at a later date.
