Charlotte Zieve

Loving matriarch to the Zieve family; wife to Edward for 65 years; outspoken and dogged advocate for numerous causes about which she felt passionate, including the environment, women’s rights and higher education.

Charlotte grew up in Chicago and got her B.S. in 1947 from University of Illinois-Champagne, where she met her husband Edward. They moved to Milwaukee in 1948 for Edward’s teaching position at MSOE, while Charlotte worked in a lab at Marquette University. They put down permanent roots in Milwaukee after Edward established a heating & ventilating sales engineering business there. In the 1970’s, after raising 6 children in Milwaukee, she went back to college and got her master’s degree in botany from UW-Milwaukee, followed by a Ph.D. from UW-Madison’s Institute for Environmental Studies in 1986.

Charlotte was a huge supporter of higher education, putting her six children through a collective 43 years of college, then going back and getting her own doctorate while she was in her 50’s. She was a lecturer at UW-Madison’s Institute for Environmental Studies after getting her Ph.D. In more recent years, she established scholarship funds and endowments for undergraduate students at a number of universities and she served on the UW-Sheboygan Foundation Board.

Charlotte was a community activist. While living in Milwaukee, her volunteer positions included the Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin board, Future Milwaukee, President of the Milwaukee Audubon Society and chair of the group that successfully fought to preserve the Nine Mile Farm in Bayside, which became the Schlitz Audubon Nature Center. She was also part of the SE Wisconsin Coalition for Clean Air which contributed to writing the first Clean Air Act. She served on the governor’s commission Outdoor Recreation and Scenic Beauty Advisory councils.

After her last child went to college, Charlotte moved to Elkhart Lake in 1985 where her husband has owned and operated Kees Inc. In Elkhart Lake, she served on the Elkhart Lake Library Board, the University of Wisconsin Sheboygan Foundation Board (president), the Non-Motorized Transportation Pilot Program advisory council, the State of Wisconsin Recycle Council, and the Bookworm Gardens Board. She also served as Historian for the Elkhart Lake Study Club, where she organized countless programs and field trips which the members enjoyed.

Throughout her life, she was a very outspoken advocate of access to family planning and women’s reproductive health care, especially in developing countries, a cause she took on with zeal after attending United Nations Conferences on Women in Cairo, Beijing, and South Africa.

Charlotte was a world traveler, visiting 83 countries in the last few decades. In recent years, she visited Malawi a handful of times after adopting and mentoring many of the Malawi students who attended Lakeland College, providing philanthropic assistance to some of their schools back in Malawi.

Probably her most heartfelt and successful endeavor was serving as the matriarch and organizer of the Zieve clan. Not a day went by that she wasn’t organizing a vacation for the entire family or keeping each family member apprised of every other family member’s current status. She was a cherished mentor to her 14 grandchildren.

She is survived by husband, Edward, of Elkhart Lake; children, Gary (June) of Northport, NY, Peter (Maria) of Mukilteo, WA, Wendy (David) of Shoreline, WA, and Kathie Norman (Bob) of Sheboygan; daughter-in-law Chris of Telluride, and daughter-in-law Sandie of Seattle. She is also survived by 14 grandchildren, Joshua (Evanston), Alex and Sarah (Northport), Olivia and Michael (Seattle), Naomi (Tel Aviv, Israel), David, Daniel, and Max (Mukilteo), Nathaniel (Boston), Nina and Vivian (Shoreline), Samantha (Ann Arbor), and Matthew (Sheboygan). She was preceded in death by two sons, Clifford, in 1975, and Andrew, in 2000. Her two siblings, Jerome Cantor and Doris Zemel, nee Cantor, both of Chicago, passed away in the 1980’s.

Through her actions, Charlotte touched lives and inspired people around the world.

Donations in her loving memory may be made to Bookworm Gardens - Charlotte Zieve Education Fund or Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin.

A memorial service will be held 12:00 Noon on Monday, June 25, 2012 at Ballhorn Chapels in Sheboygan.