Pemberville farmer was active in Lutheran church

3/5/2001

PEMBERVILLE - Frank Schuerman, 88, a longtime farmer and a leader in Bethlehem Lutheran Church here, died yesterday in Otterbein Portage Valley Retirement Village north of here.

Mr. Schuerman had been in poor health for more than two months, suffering from congestive heart failure, daughter Jane Kohlenberg said. He moved to the retirement home in May from the farmhouse on North River Road south of Pemberville, where he had lived more than 65 years.

Born on a farm east of Pemberville, he graduated from Pemberville High School and farmed with his father. Mr. Schuerman's father helped him buy an 80-acre farm during the Depression, when he married the former Henrietta Martin. He farmed with horses until the 1940s and raised a few chickens, hogs, and cows.

By the mid-1950s, he had expanded to 500 acres, and in the 1960s, he was farming 1,000 acres in partnership with his sons, Robert and Donald. Their largest crops were corn and soybeans. He fed up to 500 head of cattle a year. After his sons died, he rented his land to his grandsons.

Mr. Schuerman was employed part-time unloading livestock at a cooperative livestock brokerage yard in the Toledo area in the 1950s. Also in that era, he was secretary for the Pemberville Elevator Association, now called County Line Co-Op. Although he retired from farming in the mid-1970s, he continued to work on the farm until the mid-1990s. “His farming was his whole life, really,” his daughter said. “He enjoyed seeing things grow and producing a good crop.”

His wife died in 1990. Surviving are his daughters, Virginia Shammo, Paulette Bresler, Jane Kohlenberg, Kathleen King, Jolene Roberts, and Luann Snyder; son, Victor; sisters, Cathryn Failor and Carolyn Melcher; 27 grandchildren, and 17 great-grandchildren.

Visitation will be from 6 to 8 p.m. tomorrow in Marsh Funeral Home in Luckey and 2 to 8 p.m. Wednesday in the funeral home's Pemberville location. Funeral services will be at 10 a.m. Thursday in Bethlehem Lutheran Church, with visitation an hour earlier.

The family requests tributes to the church, the retirement village, or a charity of the donor's choice.