Joan S. Schmidt, 85, education professor

Joan S. Schmidt, 85, of Blue Bell, a professor at the former Beaver College, where she taught education for many years, died Friday, Feb. 6, of Alzheimer's disease at Foulkeways at Gwynedd.

"Dr. Joan," as she was called informally, was a loving mother, grandmother, and devoted mentor to her students.

Born in Philadelphia to immigrant parents from Stuttgart, Germany, just before the 1929 stock-market crash, she grew up in Germantown and attended Friends Select School.

Dr. Schmidt graduated from Chestnut Hill College and took a job teaching sixth grade at Whitemarsh Elementary School. While she taught, she earned a master's degree in education from Temple University.

In addition to juggling a teaching career and raising four children, Dr. Schmidt also completed a doctorate in education at Temple University.

In 1977, she self-published a work called "A Study of the Status of the Art Curriculum in Selected Elementary Schools in the State of Pennsylvania."

She went on to teach at Beaver College, now Arcadia University, starting in the 1970s. She retired in 1998, and moved in 1999 from Blue Bell to Foulkeways at Gwynedd.

Dr. Schmidt and her family spent many summers in Strathmere, N.J. Her children's friends were always welcome in the Schmidt home.

Dr. Schmidt, a Unitarian Universalist, believed in living life fully, enjoying every moment. She had traveled to five of the seven continents and had stayed in very remote locations.

In 2007, she shared with her eldest granddaughter three lines she treasured from the 1990 poem "The Summer Day," by Mary Oliver. The poem was first published in House of Light, by Beacon Press:

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

Dr. Schmidt was married to David E. Schmidt. They divorced; he died in 2011.

She is survived by three sons, David E. Jr., John, and Eric; a daughter, Johanna Townend; and eight grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at Foulkeways at Gwynedd, 1120 Meetinghouse Road, Gwynedd, at 2 p.m. Sunday, March 8.

Dr. Schmidt donated her remains to the Humanities Gifts Registry at the University of Pennsylvania.

Donations may be made to the American Friends Service Committee, 1501 Cherry St., Philadelphia Pa. 19102.