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Irma June Scamehorn, 78, the wife of the late Rev. John Scamehorn Jr., died April 4, 2011, at Hampshire Memorial Hospital in Romney, W. Va.  The Rev. Bernadette Ross officiated at her funeral April 8 at the LaVale UMC where they had lived since 2004. Ross also conducted John Scamehorn’s funeral five years earlier.

She and John Scamehorn married in 1953 in Niles, Mich., where he was a journalist with the local newspaper. They had four children before he entered Wesley Theological Seminary to study for the ministry in the 1970s. During his ministerial career, in 1979, he served the Wesley Charge in Cumberland, Mt.Savage UMC (1983-1987), then Bedington UMC for seven years. In 1994, he was appointed to Hamstead UMC and retired four years later. He died suddenly in 2006.

At each of her husband’s churches, she sang in the choir, known for her “lovely alto voice,” a daughter said. She also taught in the children’s Sunday schools. When they lived in Cumberland and Martinsburg, where they lived from 1998 to 2004, she was active with hospice.

After her husband’s death, she moved to Purgitsville, W. Va. (near Cumberland), to be with a daughter, and became a member of Mt. Olive UMC.

Survivors include her son, John Robert Scamehorn III of Moorefield, W. Va.; daughters, Sheryl A. Bowen of Purgitsville, W. Va., Lynn M. Lothian of Fairfax, Va., and Abby K. Mensinger of  LaVale,; 15 grandchildren and 19 great- grandchildren.

Irma Hassinger was born May 23, 1932, in Niles, Mich., the daughter of the late John Leroy Hassinger and Margaret Eva (Ridenour) Hassinger.