Sharon Herr Lohm passed away on February 12, 2025. Memorial contributions in her name will be placed in the For Scout Foundation fund.
From the obituary:
Sharon Herr Lohm, a ballerina, an artist, an animal lover, a pacifist, and a Buddhist born on March 29, 1943, passed away on Wednesday, February 12 surrounded by her loving family.
Born in Chicago, Sharon was proud to be a Chicagoan through and through. As a young girl from the Projects, she found what would become one of her great passions in her beloved Chicago Park District ballet classes. A graduate of Lake View High School, she would become a professional ballerina dancing the world in companies like The Joffrey Ballet, Frankfurt National Ballet, Harkness Ballet, and others. She danced with Rudolf Nureyev and under the tutelage of Igor Schwezoff and Madame Valentina Pereyaslavec. She performed on Broadway in shows like Half A Sixpence, and toured Vietnam with Martha Raye and the USO.
She would meet the love of her life Stephen Ernest Lohm in New York City while he was going to Columbia and working at The Oddity Shop. They fell in love at first sight and would later wed at City Hall and have lunch after at Chock Full of Nuts. They were undeniably each other’s great love.
Her daughter Felicity was born in Frankfurt Germany where Stephen was stationed as an officer in the US Army. They would travel throughout Europe and Africa, and adventure became a part of their life together that was one of the best parts of their love story. Whether it was to France or Italy or New Mexico or Sanibel Island, Sharon loved exploring flea markets and rock hunting and shell collecting and going through life with her very best friend.
She and Stephen and Felicity would live in New York and Singapore and Hollywood, CA and Glen Ridge, NJ where she would take Felicity’s hand and make sure to teach her about the arts and culture of every place they visited and lived. She and Stephen would eventually move to Ringwood, NJ where she lovingly cared for two feral cats and created the most beautiful garden and yard filled with magic fairy places for her two granddaughters. Following Stephen’s passing, she would move back to her beloved Chicago until she moved to Pinehurst to be close to her family.
In all of those places she was an activist and a volunteer and a proud community member. She created the Glen Ridge Community Arts Center and always was volunteering, especially reading to children. She would be a treasured employee at Nordstrom Garden State Plaza in NJ, being one of their Pacesetter performers every year she was employed there. In Chicago, she was a docent at The Edgewater Historical Society and at The Lincoln Park Conservancy. During the Pandemic, she hand sewed thousands of masks and sent them out all over the country to people. In Pinehurst, she was a tutor with the CALL Program and made toys for children in the hospital with Toymakers.
She loved her friends so very much and cherished her phone calls and visits with them. She took great joy in sending her E-Cards to friends and family for every holiday and special occasion. In her Pinehurst Trace community, she was affectionately known as The Dog Cookie Lady because she was never without a bag of dog treats, and all the dogs in the neighborhood loved seeing her on a walk or coming to visit her at her home.Sharon had a lifelong love for sewing and gardening and reading and beautiful music and flea marketing and collecting things and helping others and loving her pets. She was a gentle soul who supported countless charities and only wanted to help people and animals. She believed strongly in the power of education and was proud to support her granddaughter Katie, who graduated with honors from Middlebury College and is in the Physician Assistant Program at Methodist University. She embraced her Buddhist philosophies and chanted every day for a world filled with love and kindness and peace.Sharon was predeceased by her loving mother Elyn, her beautiful granddaughter Scout Cantrell in 2014, and her beloved husband Stephen in 2016. She is survived by her daughter Felicity (Lohm) Cantrell, her son in law Tony Cantrell, and her granddaughter Katherine Grace Cantrell.
In lieu of flowers, Sharon would request that donations may be made in her honor to the For Scout Foundation fund held at the Community Foundation of the Fox River Valley, 1971 West Downer Place Aurora IL 60506 which was established to honor the life of her granddaughter Scout by helping children and arts programs in schools and animal rescue organizations. Sharon was a loyal friend, a caring neighbor, a doting caretaker of all the animals, a tender daughter, an adoring grandmother, a loving mother, a devoted wife, and a concerned citizen of this planet. She would want us all to honor her legacy by being kind and gentle and compassionate to each other to help make the world a better place for ourselves, our environment, and our animals.A Celebration of Life service will be held 1:00 PM Sunday, March 2, 2025, at the Pinehurst Trace Clubhouse, Mockingbird Way, Pinehurst, NC 28374.Service arrangements are entrusted to Boles Funeral Home.
