July 5, 1932 - March 4, 2024

June’s home was always filled with plants and flowers, music, curiosity, hospitality, kindness, and love.

She was born June Adrienne Kuzara in Sheridan, Wyoming, in 1932. Although she moved from Wyoming in her early 20’s, Wyoming never left her; as she wrote, “maybe it’s the memories of clear trout streams singing; or aspen glowing golden in the fall; or the whispering pines of the Big Horns.”

June married her Sheridan High School sweetheart, Ed Harper. But soon found herself a war widow and pregnant. Her parents helped to raise her son. June met Carl Hess in Frontier, Wyoming, while he was home from college. He worked that summer for June’s stepdad, who worked for Carl’s stepdad at the Kemmerer Coal Co. They married in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where Carl was a newly commissioned officer in the US Army. While raising her three children she immersed herself in volunteering in Springfield, Virginia, where they settled in 1966. In addition to scouting, coaching, and PTA-ing, some of her most rewarding experiences were volunteering with the church, a Red Cross hotline, and a rape crisis center. Once her youngest child was in middle school, She was the foreign marketing coordinator for a clinical laboratory manufacturing firm, development aide for a private school, and a site manager for a Fairfax County retirement community.

Upon retirement, June went back to school, finishing up the undergraduate studies and earned her degree from Marymount University, meeting her goal of finishing college before her oldest grandchild; she beat him by one month.

Music was a lifetime passion. She wrote that the most fun she’s ever had was singing with the interfaith, multi-racial gospel choir, Mosaic Harmony. June also was a faithful alto in the church choir at Grace Presbyterian, Springfield and First Presbyterian Church, Winchester.

Always one to be busy, after moving to the retirement community in Winchester, in 2008, she dove headfirst into her new community. The wildflower garden was a particular passion of hers; She enjoyed singing with the choristers; she and Carl were known for the duets they performed together. Their annual Christmas breakfast was a well-loved tradition for many years, interrupted by the pandemic.

June grew to love Winchester. She wrote “the Shenandoah Valley may be in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains and not the Big Horns, but it makes me feel comfortable, as though I’ve come home.”

June found life meaning in her family. She is survived by her husband, Carl Hess, of Winchester, Virginia, son Ed Hess and his wife Janet of Austin, Texas, son Ernie Hess and his wife Carol of Ripon, California, daughter Kathy Hess and her husband Charles Stewart of Cambridge, Massachusetts, her niece Lisa Kuzara of Mesa, Arizona, 9 grandchildren and grandchildren spouses and 10 great grand-children.

Her children will distribute their mother’s ashes amidst the trees growing tall above Prune Creek in the Big Horns, as she requested. Her mother Violet Townsend and her brothers George and John Kuzara proceeded her in death.

The Sheridan Press - Mar. 27, 2024.