Dr. Franklin D. Zimmerman Jr.

Dr. Franklin Dieffenbach Zimmerman, Jr., died on January 3, 2012, in StoneRidge Retirement Living. He was born in Schaefferstown, PA, on January 1, 1917, a son of Emma Hartman Zimmerman and Dr. Franklin Dieffenbach Zimmerman, and brother to Elizabeth Burkhart, Mary Fetter, Margaret Zimmerman, Anna Reath, Grace Martin, and John Zimmerman, all deceased. He was married to Kathryn Overly, who died in 1992, and is survived by their five children: Emma Beth (Betsy), married to Thomas Nolt: Franklin (Spike), married to Cindy; John; Rebecca (Becky), married to Dr. James Christman; and Clayton (Snap), married to Laurie. He also has eleven grandchildren and twenty-one great-grandchildren.

Dr. Zimmerman attended Schaefferstown School, Lebanon High School, Perkiomen Preparatory School, Lafayette College (class of 1939), and Jefferson Medical School (class of 1943). During his residency at Lancaster General Hospital, he was drafted into the U.S. Army Medical Corps, and served in a medical support unit in Burma and China during World War II. After the war, he began his medical practice in Schaefferstown in 1946, and by the time he retired in 1988, he had delivered over 1000 babies.

He was a life-long member of St. Luke Lutheran Church in Schaefferstown, belonged to the Union Kanal Grundsau Lodsch 17 and the Lebanon County Medical Society, and was a charter member of the North Carolina Beach Buggy Association. A man of many interests, he enjoyed fishing, golf, music – he played clarinet in a local band and orchestra, mushroom hunting, flying his Piper Cub, building model airplanes and fishing rods, and astronomy.

He will be greatly missed by his family and his friends.

A memorial service will be held at St. Luke Lutheran Church, Schaefferstown, on Tuesday, January 8, at noon. In lieu of flowers, contributions in Dr. Zimmerman’s memory can be made to St. Luke’s Lutheran, PO Box 278, Schaefferstown, PA 17088, and to the Lebanon Health Clinic, 135 S. 9th St., Lebanon, PA 17042.