OBITUARY FROM POST-TRIBUNE VIA LEGACY.COM WEBSITE:
JUNE JOHNSON GUETTEL 1915 - 2004
June Johnson Guettel died Sunday, June 6, while a resident at the Rosa Coplon Living Center at the Weinberg Campus in Getzville, New York. She is survived by her loving husband Charles Guettel, 2650 N. Forest Road, M213, Getzville, N.Y., 1406, her four children, Susan G. Cole of Buffalo, NY, Charnie Guettel of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Alan Guettel of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Clark Guettel of Killaloe, Ontario, Canada, her sisters Grace M. Krueger of Mission Viejo, CA, & Ethel C. Erickson of Fresno, CA. Her brothers Clark, Robert, & Stanley, preceded her in death.
June was born in June, married in June, died in June, & her name was June. Her personality was like the month of June, positive & full of possibilities, with the idea that even better things were about to happen. Her eyes were blue as the sky in June, her heart was warm, & her arms were always open to all of us. She was a very unique person. The first one in her family to ever attend & finish college, she worked her way through Augustana College as a domestic servant & waitress, having a mission to change the world, change herself, & discover the truth of things. The hardworking oldest girl of Swedish dairy farming parents (Agnes North & Albert Johnson) in Hobart, Indiana, she translated her farm & nurturance skills into reform causes. She majored in Greek so she could read the New Testament in the original, & got a job as a Lutheran missionary in East Africa. But the Nazis sank the ZamZam, on which she was to sail, & her life took a different course.
A school teacher in Rock Island, Illinois, she met & fell in love with someone who thought as she did about volunteer work & politics, Charlie Guettel. They were to be a team for sixty three years. His Jewish reform liberalism shined a light on her path. She was nuts about him. Charlie's causes merged with hers, & together they forged a way of life, a partnership of organizational & educational activities that included United Nations reform, World Federalism, Civil Rights & integration, city politics (she was campaign manager for city councilmen, among other things), Planned Parenthood (her pioneering work in this field preceded the Womens Lib era by many years), Community Chest, Boy Scouts & Girl Scouts, League of Women Voters, United Church Women, daycare, peace, PTA, urban renewal, aid to refugees (together they personally sponsored fifty five individuals, & helped many more). June's day school boards required women to quit teaching if they married. So after her marriage her professional aspirations were expressed in volunteer work, which never ceased the whole time she was raising a family & caring for her home. Charlie totally supported her in her work, & found her tireless activities for the community a constant source of inspiration.
Charlie was a metallurgist, a spectroscopist with Driver-Harris, in Harrison, New Jersey, & we were raised nearby in East Orange. June saw her children as her contribution as well, giving us every opportunity to develop educationally, & in music & the arts. She always wanted us to go further than she did, in our ideas, in our personal liberation, in our contributions. She got a kick out of us. & she totally believed in Charlie, was so tuned in to his mind & his sense of humour, his politics & he worships her. She cared about poetry, & was very moved by art & the beauty of flowers, woods, lakes. She had a strong poetic relationship with music, & love of music was a big part of our home. The opera was always on the radio Saturday afternoons, & we all remember passing by her in the kitchen at the sink, tears going down her face over an aria. Charlie & June met at a concert, found out they already had tickets to the same concert series in Rock Island, & started a relationship discovering they were both horn players (he saxophone, she coronet) in their respective award winning school bands. (Hobart High had won the National Championship while June was in it, Lake View was a finalist while Charlie was in it). June weaved her way of life around other peoples ways of life, always keeping her own strong sense of mission, & love of her family, art, nature, the community, human possibility. We don't know the half of what she did for other people. We are always hearing from other people of ways she helped people, for years. She grew with the times, as Black Liberation & Women's Liberation changed the face of community organizing, she moved with the times & was true to her beliefs & internationalist principles. She always had such a sense of purpose, & I think that is her great gift to us. She thought love was the meaning of life, & lived that idea.
Memorial contributions can be made to your favorite peace group or UNICEF.
Published by Post-Tribune on Jul. 4, 2004.
This information was obtained from: https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/post-tribune/name/june-guettel-obituary?id=27414494. The picture above was obtained from the 1933 HHS Aurora yearbook (when June was a sophomore), made available by the Lake County Public Library, at: https://archive.org/details/HOHS1933Images/.