Wenner—D. Richard “Dick” Wenner, 98, on December 18, 2025, peacefully, at the Wenner family farm in Stillwater, Pa. Born on that farm on June 14, 1927, Dick was the youngest child of William C. Wenner Sr. and Mary Leona Seesholtz. His parents met in church, and the family, including siblings Gertude, Harriet, William Jr., and Dorothy, attended St. James Church (United Church of Christ). Dick attended Zaners School, a one-room schoolhouse, where he skipped two elementary grades, before graduating from Bloomsburg High School. He entered the U.S. Navy Reserve as an officer in training toward the end of World War II and attended Swarthmore College on a Navy scholarship before completing his bachelor’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania, where he also earned a master’s in governmental administration at the Fels Institute of Government.
Dick’s professional career focused on service to communities, especially rural communities. His first job was as borough manager of Clarks Summit, Pa. He later became deputy secretary for agriculture for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. In that role, he built a reputation for being a change agent. Dick later joined the Office of Economic Opportunity with Sargent Shriver in Washington, D.C. He became a voice advocating for those experiencing rural poverty and was an advisor to Senator Robert F. Kennedy on this issue. In 1967, during his work as executive director of the National Association for Community Development, he was interviewed on an episode of CBS Radio’s Capitol Cloakroom.
Throughout his career, Dick worked with progressive political figures, including civil rights activists Marian Wright Edelman, a lawyer and advocate for children’s rights who founded the Children’s Defense Fund; and Morris Milgram, a pioneer of integrated housing. Dick was the administrator who organized the historic Senate trip to Mississippi in 1967 that was part of a subcommittee’s examination of the War on Poverty programs. Dick’s work in the next decades continued to focus on issues of poverty, housing, and immigrant rights, until he retired as the executive director of the Fund for an Open Society, a nonprofit housing organization in Philadelphia, Pa., in 1993.
Seeking a peace church, Dick, his wife, Shirley, and their daughters Amanda and Melinda found a home in the Quaker faith. In the late 1970s, the family participated in the founding of Greenwood Friends School after they had joined Millville (Pa.) Meeting. Dick’s commitment to education led him to serve Philadelphia Yearly Meeting on the Education Standing Committee and also on the General Committee (Board of Trustees) of Westtown School. Lifelong generational dedication to education and service to communities is one of Dick’s legacies. During his lifetime he was a volunteer for libraries, prison visitation, the unhoused, and forest conservation. A weekly vigil for peace that he started continues to this day in Bloomsburg, Pa.
Dick was predeceased by his wife of 48 years, Shirley Lockwood Wenner, in 2016.
He is survived by five children, David Wenner, William Wenner (Bobbi), Elizabeth Sizer, Melinda Wenner Bradley (Matthew), and Amanda Wenner; nine grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.
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