Recovered Jo Zeimet memorial source — June 29, 2023.
Anna Hughes Schneller sent family and friends an invitation titled “Celebrating Our Jo” for a gathering on August 20, 2023, Jo’s birthday.
The invitation records Jo’s dates as August 20, 1950 – May 15, 2023. Family and friends were invited to bring funny or touching memories, make music, and contribute stories for a memorial book. In lieu of flowers, donations to the People and Pollinators Action Network were suggested as a way to continue Jo’s legacy.
The surviving Gmail archive includes both the memorial invitation PDF and PNG.
August 2023 — obituary draft
In August, Danielle helped Sue Anderson draft Jo’s obituary. The draft records Jo’s full name as Mary Jo Zeimet, born August 20, 1950, in Hot Springs, South Dakota, to Peter William Zeimet and AraBelle June Fuller Zeimet.
The obituary describes Jo as smart, funny, irreverent, quirky, kind, a gifted storyteller, lifelong learner, musician, gardener, traveler, dog lover, and someone determined to make the world better through fair treatment of people, music, pollinator gardening, food-bank growing, animals, and everyday acts of kindness.
Danielle included Jo’s own words about wanting a life filled with family and friends, dogs, gardens, camping, music, laughter, travel, good food, learning, and gratitude for every day. The draft closes with Jo’s own suggested legacy: “do a kindness for someone else, cast a pearl in another’s pond, or give a stranger a big beautiful smile.”
The thread also confirms that Sue planned to place the finished obituary online and consider a local newspaper notice so future family researchers could find it.
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