Always civic-minded, Barbara H. Scheerer served on the board of the East Hampton Library for 34 years and for over 20 years was a member of the East Hampton Village Planning Board and the board of East Hampton Meals on Wheels.
Mrs. Scheerer died at home in East Hampton on Monday. She was 92 and had been in declining health.
She was a nature lover, whether inside or out, tending to a vast collection of houseplants and keeping “her many birdfeeders obsessively filled, even if it meant fattening up the neighborhood squirrels,” her family said. She kept a garden “overrun with milkweeds, for the monarch butterflies,” and gourds that she would later dry and use as birdfeeders or home decorations.
She was “known for her especially unpretentious manner,” her family wrote, so it “amused her and everyone else” when she won a plant award for her salmon-colored hydrangea in a competition judged by Martha Stewart.
Mrs. Scheerer was born in New York City on July 30, 1930, to Russell Hopkinson and the former Mary Lewis. She grew up mostly in New York City, attended the Brearley School there, the Rippowam School in Bedford, N.Y., and then the Garrison Forest School in Maryland before going on to Pine Manor College in Massachusetts. She and Paul R. Scheerer Jr., who survives, were married on Sept. 12, 1953.
The Scheerers had lived on Windmill Lane in East Hampton since the 1950s. They had a son and three daughters.
As a young woman, she enjoyed outdoor adventures, and once “fearlessly led her children hiking up Noonmark in the Adirondacks,” an escapade that resulted in their “missing a rehearsal for their cousin’s wedding,” her daughters recalled. Her husband was a private pilot, and she soloed in his Piper Tri-Pacer plane while she was pregnant with her third child.
“Fascinated by technology, she encouraged her husband to invest in Microsoft at its inception, only to have her husband regretfully disregard her,” her children wrote. “She did teach herself to use an early personal computer and then used it to keep the minutes for the East Hampton Library Board.”
Outside of her civic and outdoor pursuits, Mrs. Scheerer was an excellent tennis player who took to the courts well into her 80s, often beating younger players in doubles. “Her tennis stroke was as mean as they get,” her children said. “In her later years she religiously followed tennis and maintained an encyclopedic knowledge of players’ careers.”
Her nightstand was kept stacked with a selection of books freshly picked from The New York Times Book Review. “Not a traveler, her vivid imagination in tandem with a book’s plot took her far and wide,” her family said, adding that “she was partial to mysteries and trying to solve them as she read.”
She could play the piano by ear, and she had an extensive collection of Broadway musical albums, “which she typically played while washing the dishes.”
In addition to her husband, she is survived by her four children, Mary Scheerer of Southold, Jill Scheerer of East Hampton, Wendy FitzPatrick of Hampton Bays, and Paul Renner Scheerer III of East Hampton. She also leaves four grandchildren, Danielle FitzPatrick, Keriann FitzPatrick, Jack
FitzPatrick, and Makenzie Scheerer, and a brother, Peter Hopkinson of San Francisco.
Her family wrote that they are “proud of all her accomplishments and will immortalize all her delicious signature dishes with a private, small family dinner.” They have suggested memorial contributions to East Hampton Meals on Wheels, 33 Newtown Lane, Suite 205, East Hampton 11937.
