Remembering Herma Hoyer: A JYM year that would lead to 50 years of Germany/India/US connections

Heidi Riechel remembers her mother-in-law and JYM alumna Herma Hoyer (JYM 1956-57)

My mother-in-law, Herma H. Riechel, was born on March 19, 1936, in Orange, New Jersey. Her parents, Irma and Herman Hoyer immigrated to the US from southwest Germany in the 1920s. Herma grew up in Maplewood, New Jersey, and graduated from Drew University with a BA degree in German literature, language, and liberal arts. Herma’s studies took her abroad to Munich, Germany when she enrolled in the 1956 – 1957 Junior Year in Munich program. After graduation, Herma taught junior high and high school German and English in New Jersey.

My mother-in-law often shared stories from her JYM experience, which she considered life-changing. She traveled quite a bit, including to a divided Berlin. My favorite story was when she and other students drove a 1960s VW van from Germany, all the way down into former Yugoslavia and Albania.

While in Munich, Herma met her loving husband of 62 years. Gerhard was a student at the University of Munich and grew up in Osterode, Germany. They married in New Jersey in 1960 and spent their first 24 years of marriage in Maplewood and Harrington Park, New Jersey, where they raised their two adopted children, David and Diana.

                  

                           

 

One of my favorite photos of my mother-in-law is of her looking at a painting, I believe in Austria, where she traveled on one holiday during her year abroad with JYM. She would go on to be one of the “art ladies” at her kids’ elementary school and always had a love for art.

It is no wonder that I fell in love with Herma and Gerhard’s son, David. Like him, I had grown up in an international family. My mother is from South India and my father was an American Peace Corps volunteer. They met and married while he was serving in India in the 1960s. Little did I know that my father’s Peace Corps experience would one day be one of several connections between me and my German mother-in-law.

At my wedding to David, I met one of my in-laws’ close family friends, Kenneth Kurze, another JYM alum who had studied in Munich with my mother-in-law. He worked around the world for the US Foreign Service, including a detail to the Peace Corps’ India Program in Washington. My husband and I had the pleasure of hearing many of Herma and Ken’s JYM stories over the years. One of Ken’s foreign service posts was in Mumbai, India, It led to another connection between Herma and Ken. Just as she had adopted her children, my husband and I adopted our children from India.  

Herma and Gerhard moved to West Bloomfield, Michigan in 1984 for her husband’s career with Volkswagen. She briefly taught German to Chrysler executives scheduled for a tour of duty in Europe. In 1996, Herma and Gerhard retired to Boca Raton, FL, where she would always be surrounded by many wonderful JYM memories. Herma was an enthusiastic traveler, meeting people and developing lifelong friendships

Herma battled Alzheimer’s for the last 10 years of her life and passed away peacefully in her sleep on August 16, 2022, in Boca Raton. She is survived by her husband Gerhard, her son David (wife Heidi) in Atlanta, GA, her daughter Diana in San Antonio, and her three grandchildren Stephen, Caroline, and Russell Jr. She will be remembered as “such a sweet and kind lady.”