June Wing

LOVELL — June Wing, 98, died at her home in Baltimore, M.D., on Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2014.
Born Jan. 16, 1916 to John and Elsa (Lohr) Stockfisch, she and her younger sister, Jean (Whittenberger), were raised in Chicago by their devoted grandparents, Rudolf and Agnes Lohr, after their mother, a concert vocalist, died. From an early age, June was a noticeable person — for her intelligence and curiosity, her academic achievements, her leadership in many settings, her storytelling abilities, her recall of poetry and prose, and her sense of justice. An honors graduate of Nicholas Senn High School in Chicago and Oberlin College, she later completed a master’s degree in Science, Technology and Public Policy at George Washington University. She taught at the high school, college and post-graduate levels at Loyola College, Goucher College and the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene on issues of nuclear testing and proliferation, radiation hazards, and environmental ethics. Earlier, she was the first female president of her junior high school student body, a leader in the Campfire Girls, and an accomplished canoe paddler at the Wisconsin camp she attended on a scholarship. She loved dancing and was good at it, and she loved good music — from classic operas, Shubert, American spirituals and gospel, all the way to the Dixon Brothers and their 1936 song The Intoxicated Rat.
June came of age in the Depression and those hard times contributed to her evolution as a lifelong activist: for peace, for civil rights and liberties, for professional and experimental ethics, for gender and financial equality, for nuclear disarmament, for a national system of single-payer health care, and for increased caution in the uses of ionizing radiation. When June saw something that needed doing, she joined with others to get it done.
June served as the president of the Baltimore chapter of the League of Women Voters and wrote a history of that organization for its 75th anniversary — 75 years after women got the right to vote. She was president of the Maryland chapter of the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy and a member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Physicians for Social Responsibility, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Citizen’s Advisory Board to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and a supporter of the Committee for Responsible Genetics. She was a World Federalist and a member of the United Nations Association of Maryland.
June was predeceased by her husband, Dr. Wilson M. Wing, who grew up primarily in the Washington, D.C. area. His father’s family was from Maine; his stepmother owned a cabin on Kezar Lake in Lovell where June and Wilson first met. She spent part of nearly every summer for 75 years in Lovell, and was an active member of the community and a supporter of the Charlotte Hobbs Memorial Library.
She is survived by her three children, David and Daniel Wing and Deborah Korol; three grandchildren and a great grandchild.
All are invited to attend the celebration of her life at the Stony Run Friends Meeting House, 5116 North Charles Street, Baltimore, at 2 p.m., Dec. 13, 2014. A memorial celebration will be held in Lovell in 2015.
In lieu of flowers, June asked that gifts be made to the League of Women Voters of Baltimore, 6600 York Road, Baltimore, MD 21210, or to Viva House, 26 South Mount Street, Baltimore, MD 21223.