Janette Hegner Wheeler, 99, of Hightstown, N.J. and South Bristol, passed away at Meadow Lakes on Oct. 17.
Daughter of Dr. Robert W. Hegner and Jane Z. Hegner, she was born in Chicago in 1908 and grew up in Ann Arbor, Mich. and Baltimore, Md.
She graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College in 1930 and spent a year in Rome on a postgraduate international fellowship at the American Academy. She worked at Harriet Lane, the pediatric ward at Johns Hopkins University Hospital as a social worker and taught at the Rye Country Day School.
After she married John Archibald Wheeler in 1932 she lived for several years in Chapel Hill, N.C. before moving to Princeton in 1938 where Professor Wheeler taught physics at Princeton University.
During WWII, Mrs. Wheeler made a home for her family in Chicago, Wilmington and Richland, Wash., where her husband oversaw the development of plutonium for the atom bomb. In later years she accompanied him on sabbaticals to France, Los Alamos, N.M., the Netherlands and Japan.
Mrs. Wheeler and her husband were founding members of the Unitarian Church of Princeton, N.J. and she initiated the Friends of the Princeton Public Library. She was a member of the League of Women Voters, the University League and its garden club and an early docent at the University Art Museum. She was the first alumna chosen from outside the Boston, Mass. area to be a member of the Radcliffe College Alumnae Board of Management.
She devoted a great deal of time and effort to looking after her family as well as an extended family of graduate students and distinguished physicists from around the world.
After Professor Wheeler’s retirement in 1976, Prof. and Mrs. Wheeler spent 10 happy years in Austin, Tex. where he had gone to head the newly created Center for Theoretical Physics at the University of Texas.
Mrs. Wheeler is survived by her husband of 72 years, John Archibald Wheeler; daughters, Letitia W. Ufford and Alison W. Lahnston of Princeton, N.J. and son, Dr. James Wheeler of Ardmore, Penn. and spouses; eight loving grandchildren; and 14 great-grandchildren.
A private memorial service will be held in Maine during the summer.
Memorial gifts may be made to Planned Parenthood Association of the Mercer Area, 437 East State St., Trenton, NJ 08650 or the Friends of the Princeton Public Library, 65 Witherspoon St., Princeton, NJ 08542.