John Frederick Moehlmann

Cherished father, grandfather, brother, uncle, friend, and teacher, Dr. John Frederick Moehlmann passed away January 5, 2022, at Frye Regional Medical Center, in Hickory, NC. The cause was ALS. Born December 23, 1942, to Laura Pauline “Polly” Cline Moehlmann and Frederick William “Beck” Moehlmann, of Conover, NC, John and his sister, Shirley Moehlmann Canrobert, grew up in a family devoted to music, learning, laughter, and Concordia Lutheran Church, where their uncle Richard Lineberger served as pastor and their father as the church’s longtime organist. John’s grandparents Gustav Edward and Wilhelmina Kaufmann Moehlmann were early supporters of the church and Concordia College, having moved to Conover from Sheboygan, WI, in 1905 with a soon-to-be family of ten children.

As a boy, John attended Concordia Day School; drove two-wheel carts at shows in Blowing Rock, NC, and elsewhere for the horses his father trained; and learned marksmanship at the local rifle range. Mischance in the backyard led to a badly burned leg, and he would recall the great care and love his mother showed him during a long convalescence. Dreams of football were realized his senior year, and he would be named by a local newspaperman to the list of all-time-best Red Devils. He graduated from Newton-Conover High School in 1961.

In 1965, he graduated from Lenoir-Rhyne College, where he ran track as a high-hurdler on “Joe Rhyne’s team,” as he called it, and played football on the 1962 Hanley Painter and Norman Punch team that went to the NAIA National Championship. About his football days, he would joke to his children, “Number 85 on the field, number one in your heart!” He credited the formidable Mary Catherine Shivers, his high school English teacher, for his love of literature and was honored that she welcomed him back for student-teaching.

In August of 1965, he married his high school sweetheart, Martha Jane Isenhower, a Lenoir-Rhyne alumna. John earned a master’s degree at Appalachian State in 1967. From 1967 to 1969, he taught Marines at Camp Lejeune, in Jacksonville, NC, through the Eastern Carolina University Division of Continuing Education. He then taught for a year at Francis Marion College and served as interim dean of student affairs. The couple then moved to Knoxville, where John earned a doctorate, in 1974, under Percy G. Adams at the University of Tennessee. The same year brought a son, Nathan, and in 1975 John received an appointment as professor of English at High Point College, now university. A daughter, Gretchen, arrived in 1977. Tenured in 1981, with publication of A Concordance to the Complete Poems of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester in 1980, John received the Meredith Clark Slane Distinguished Teaching/Service Award in 1982.

He served the university on many committees and enjoyed being a starter at home track meets, but his passion was teaching, Shakespeare in particular, and directing the writing-across-the-curriculum program, for which his high regard for colleagues across all disciplines — and engaged conversation with them over the cafeteria lunch table — served the program well. Not one to enjoy ballcaps in his classroom, let alone worn backwards, he nevertheless had a winning rapport with students, evidenced by stacks of their warm letters sent to him during their university years and well after. He served as advisor of Apogee, the campus literary magazine, for over fifteen years. Area high schoolers attended the Phoenix Literary Festival, an on-campus poetry workshop that he coordinated for over two decades.

His service to the broader community included support of the Friends of the High Point Theatre, for which he served as president from 1979 to 1981, and of the North Carolina Shakespeare Festival for which he served on the board of directors and presented synopses of plays to Elderhostel groups and high schoolers and for whose director, the late Pedro Silva, his admiration was without bounds. In 1999, he took the stage successfully as the Earl of Northumberland in Henry IV, though his children’s nerves are still shot.

In 2006, with dear friends Prof. Shirley Rawley and Rev. Dr. Earl Crow presiding, he married Eleanor Carol Branard, now of Austin, TX. He retired shortly thereafter. A lifelong woodworker — “one tool away from greatness,” he would say — he joined the Piedmont Triad Woodturners where he formed abiding friendships with Harold Jones, Doc Green, and Bob Holtje, “The Old Farts.” When he wasn’t at the lathe, his dedication to teaching continued through Reading Connections at the High Point Public Library, where he read English-language novels with Korean American children and adults in whose accomplishments he expressed the greatest pride.

John Frederick Moehlmann is survived by his sister and brother-in-law, Shirley and Dr. Clarence Canrobert, of Conover, NC; his daughter and son-in-law, Gretchen Moehlmann and Dr. Jonathan Risner, of Bloomington, IN, whose children Arno (13) and Ila (10) made him the best papa ever; his son Nathan Moehlmann and his fiancée, Vicki Vanderlinden, of Granite Falls, NC; his nephew and godson, Mark Canrobert and his wife, Mary, of Conover, NC; his niece Laura Canrobert, of Winston-Salem, NC; his niece Louise Canrobert Hester and her husband, David, of Walkertown, NC; and his nephew Charlie Canrobert, of Newton, NC.

A father who never missed a game, who let the leash run, but not too long, and whose love for his children was complete, John’s last months were spent in stoic high spirits at Kingston Residence of Hickory, where the staff, fellow residents, and caretakers from Geraldine’s Care loved him and his family such that when returning from outings, he would see the Kingston sign and say, “Home again.” The family is also grateful to Dr. John W. Weaver, Dr. Ikechukwu Nwobu, Dr. Yulia V. Radionchenko, P.A. Andrew Maier, Dr. Mitchell Isaac, Dr. James Caress, and Dr. Lisa Caporossi.

A graveside service will be held at Conover City Cemetery, Tuesday, January 11, 2022 at 2:00pm. Everyone is welcome to attend the graveside service for John. Reverend Michael Geml of Concordia Lutheran Church will officiate. In lieu of flowers, read aloud some Shakespeare with a loved one, or memorials can be sent to High Point University, the High Point Public Library, Greyhound Friends of NC, Lenoir-Rhyne University’s Visiting Writers Series, or Concordia Lutheran Church.

Among the stacks of student letters a “thank you,” in 1987, from Seema Qubein Atalla, whom he adored, proves valedictory: “You have brought me oboes, strawberries, seagulls, barometers, alphabets, sand, and so much peace! Hallelujah for you! May the winds bless your rosetrees!”

Condolences may be sent to the Moehlman family at www.drumfh-conover.com.

The Moehlman family is in the care of Drum Funeral Home of Conover.