Janet Woodhull of Minneapolis pioneered efforts to support Minnesota seniors and their families.
Woodhull, who led programs at DARTS, a non-profit organization that serves seniors, and at her church, St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral in Minneapolis, died of gastric cancer on Nov. 5 at her Minneapolis home.
She was 85.
"She was always helping and serving people," whether as a volunteer or a career gerontologist, said her daughter Holly Woodhull Churchward of Bloomington.
She grew up in Minneapolis and attended a private boarding school in Massachusetts. She received a bachelor's degree in history from Smith College in Northampton, Mass., in 1944.
After receiving a master's degree in Christian education from the Union Theological Seminary in New York, she taught at the University of Iowa's Episcopalian center.
She returned to the Twin Cities in the late 1940s, marrying in 1951.
In the 1960s, she served as a field director for the Girl Scouts of America. By the mid-1970s, she was running programs for seniors at such places as the old Mount Sinai Hospital in Minneapolis.
She trained seniors to become para-professional counselors to other seniors.
Respite care program
In the mid 1970s, she joined the staff of the former Dakota Area Referral and Transportation for Seniors in West St. Paul, and was one of the first people in Minnesota to have a respite care program, training volunteers to care for seniors, giving primary caregivers a break.
"People who care for an invalid or a frail elderly person need to put their own needs first sometimes, and get out of the house regularly," she told the Star Tribune.
Beth Wiggins of Minneapolis, vice president of community services for DARTS, said Woodhull also established a peer counseling program that prepared older volunteers to support their peers.
"She just bubbled over with excitement" about gerontology and aging, and was a mentor to many people in the profession.
Woodhull took Wiggins under her wing when she was starting out. "She was such a good example of vital aging," said Wiggins.
In 1996, Woodhull served as president of the Minnesota Gerontological Society, and in 1997 received its Dutch Kastenbaum Outstanding Gerontologist Award.
She retired from DARTS in 1998, and continued to help seniors at St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral.
As a lay leader, she provided communion to the elderly and the home-bound, operated a weekly program for the homeless and co-directed the annual Christmas dinner for seniors.
Rev. Spenser Simrill, dean of St. Mark's, said Woodhull gave to anyone, "an abiding presence of hospitality and welcome," and was active in the church's interfaith programs.
"She was not only devout but devoted, and she drew people in, but did not put them off," he said.
Her husband, Schuyler Woodhull, died in 2005.
In addition to Holly, she is survived by daughters Allison Donelan of Newton, Mass., and Amy Hunt of Santa Maria, Calif., sons Schuyler of Eagan and Duncan of Minnetonka and 12 grandchildren.
Services will be held at 3 p.m. Saturday at St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral, 519 Oak Grove Street, Minneapolis.
