Pfeiffer University is mourning the loss of former Assistant Professor of Music Jane Herwig Scheer, 84, of Richfield, NC, who passed away on February 10, 2025. Scheer taught at Pfeiffer College from 1963 to 1987, joining her husband, Stanley Scheer, former Professor of Music, Head of the Music Department, and Chapel Organist, in working to develop a music program. Their efforts helped grow the program from four students in 1963 to a fully accredited program offering a degree in Church Music, with majors in voice and organ, and a degree in Music Education, with majors in piano, woodwind, brass and percussion instruments. She taught voice, piano, violin, and classes in string methods and musicianship. She also directed two of the six college choirs.

A special memorial service will be held on March 1, at 2 pm, in the Henry Pfeiffer Chapel, on the Misenheimer Campus. Alumni and former students in the choirs and music program are invited to join her husband, family and friends, in commemorating and reflecting upon Scheer’s life by singing in the service’s choir, directed by Joe Judge ’87, former director of choral activities and assistant professor at Pfeiffer. Rehearsal is at 10 am on March 1. Choir members will break for lunch in the Dining Hall on campus, at 12 pm. Choir members are asked to dress in black and white and to RSVP by February 26, with name and voice type, via advance@pfeiffer.edu or (704) 463-3034.

Scheer began to play the piano and violin in grade school and later studied organ. She graduated from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ, with a Bachelor of Music degree in organ performance and a Master of Music degree in choral conducting. While in college she played violin in the orchestra, toured with the Westminster Choir in the United States and Canada, and performed twice each year in a series of four concerts with the Westminster Symphonic Choir and the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center under the direction of Leonard Bernstein and other notable conductors. Most of these performances were followed by recording sessions resulting in discs released under the Columbia label.

In addition to her work at Pfeiffer, Scheer was the organist and choir director at Christ Episcopal Church in Albemarle, NC, from 1972-2015. She also worked with the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina as a member of the Commission on Liturgy. In 1975, she began volunteering in speech therapy with autistic children. She was a member of the Board of Directors for the Group Home for the Autistic and served as Treasurer. Scheer also served on the Boards of the Greenwood Center and the Stanly County Arts Council.

In 1977, she was the assistant director of music for the Uwharrie Players production of “Fiddler on the Roof.” As an active member of the Pfeiffer University Friends of the Library, she served as treasurer for over ten years. Scheer received the North Carolina Volunteer of the Year Award in 1977 and was elected to Who’s Who in the South and Southwest in 1980. In 2016, she and her husband and several friends established “Sundays at Three,” a chamber music concert series in Albemarle.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Christ Episcopal Church, PO Box 657, Albemarle NC 28002, or to GHA Autism Supports, PO Box 2487, Albemarle NC 28002. Or consider planting a tree or flowering plant on your property or elsewhere that will nourish and support nature.