Born Dec. 13, 1936
Fayetteville, Pennsylvania
Died Aug. 29, 2023
Lebanon, New Hampshire
Details of services
At Jo’s request, there will be no calling hours or funeral service, rather a celebration of life will be held at the Tinmouth Community Center in Tinmouth, Vermont on October 14 from 2-4 p.m. Bring memories and stories of Jo to share. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in her memory to the Tinmouth Community Fund, and sent to Tinmouth Community Fund, 143 Channel Road, Tinmouth, VT 05773.
Joanne Trogler Reynolds, 86, died peacefully with family by her side at the Jack Byrne Palliative Care Center in Lebanon, NH on August 29, 2023. Born in Fayetteville, Pennsylvania on December 13, 1936, Jo lived much of her adult life in the Washington, DC area before moving to Tinmouth, Vermont in 2003.
Jo graduated from Chambersburg High School in 1954 and majored in history at Bates College graduating cum laude in 1958. She met her husband Grant, of Montpelier, Vermont in the debate team room at Bates College in 1954 and they married in 1958. After graduation, in an early sign of her taste for both toughness and adventure, Jo drove 2,400 miles across the Southwest with two dozen Girl Scouts on an archeology trip.
In 1960, Jo and Grant moved to suburban Washington DC and settled in Potomac, MD near the C&O Canal National Park with their three children.
Jo became “just a housewife” (her words and punctuation) at a time when this was the norm, but she packed her days while the kids were at school as an active volunteer. Jo contributed 50 years of volunteer leadership to her many communities and interests. She joined the League of Women Voters, serving on their Board, and learned to be a “lobbyist”, both locally and in Annapolis at the State House. She continued with Girl Scouting in many capacities, as a troop leader, trainer, Day Camp Director, and Board Member. She became PTA President in the elementary and high schools her children attended. She joined Adventure Theatre, a children’s theater group, because her children loved it. Starting with ticket sales, she eventually served as President, leading and managing the establishment of their permanent theater at Glen Echo National Park. She served on the C&O Canal Commission, was a Charter member of the C&O Canal Bike Patrol, served on the Board of Directors of Housing Charities Inc., and was a Trustee of Bates College from 1988-1993 serving as the Chairman of the Annual Fund. From 2003-2006, Jo launched a successful fundraising campaign to replace the mule-drawn canal barge at her beloved C&O National Park.
Jo was inducted into the Bates College Scholar-Athlete Society in 2020. In the 1950s there were six varsity sports for men at Bates, but none for women. Jo did all the intramural athletics that women could do: basketball, field hockey, and lacrosse and spent winters skiing and swimming on a synchronized swim team. As a senior, she won the “Betty Bates” award for the best female athlete.
In subsequent years, she went on to run marathons, play competitive tennis, become an avid downhill skier and ski instructor, climb Mt. Rainier, and do challenging treks in Switzerland, Bhutan, and Nepal. At the age of 54, Jo fulfilled a life dream and through-hiked the Appalachian Trail solo, covering 15 miles a day for over five months from Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine.
Jo’s husband Grant always had a passion for cars, and he encouraged Jo to compete in autocrosses in his tiny but very fast formula car. Jo called this activity “advanced driver training”, and she competed avidly and successfully, often beating Grant and once winning the Sports Car Club of America Southeast Divisional Championship.
As a mom, Jo shared the outdoors with her family on hiking, canoeing, bike touring and camping trips in the US and for a memorable family trip to Finland where she revisited friends from a Girl Scout exchange program. In later years, Jo gathered the family on adventures: skiing in amazing places, bike touring in Holland, visiting Machu Picchu and the Galapagos, and a trip with her daughters to Costa Rica at 80 that included zip lining.
In 1980, with two daughters in college, Jo started a career as a real estate broker that combined her people skills and business savvy. She worked through six or seven roller coaster market cycles, and she finally retired at 70 when the last one crested in 2006.
In Tinmouth, Jo played an active role in the community as a member of the Conservation Commission, the Tinmouth Community Fund Board, the Tinmouth Handbell Choir, and the team that ran the Old Firehouse Concert series. Jo ran the cross-country ski program for Tinmouth School kids for many years with Grant in charge of equipment and was an active school volunteer. Jo and Grant were avid and supportive grandparents, attending all four granddaughters’ athletic events, plays, singing performances and school events for much of their school days.
Jo is survived by her three children and four grandchildren: Cathy Reynolds and her husband Doug Fontein, of Tinmouth and their daughters, Amelia Fontein and her husband Guillaume Sparrow-Pepin of Putney, Vermont, and Izzy Fontein, of Blowing Rock, NC; Carin Reynolds and her husband Peter Kermond of Lebanon, NH and Carin’s daughters, Eloise Pierson of Germantown Maryland and Cate Pierson of Brooklyn, New York; and Colin Reynolds and his wife Trisha Reynolds of Del Norte, Colorado. Jo is also survived by her brother, George Trogler and his partner Neil Shaughnessy.
A lover of the outdoors and family, a businesswoman, committed volunteer and world adventurer, Jo will be missed by many, but most of all by her family.
