Marie Yoder Wenner was born in Souderton, Pennsylvania, the seventh of nine children, and spent her working life in Christian education alongside her husband, Rev. Nelson Jerome Wenner, in churches and camps across central and eastern Pennsylvania. She taught nursery school and church school, wrote curriculum and a published children's story, ran workshops, wrote a newspaper column, and at forty-eight went back to school for a Master's degree so she could work as an elementary school counselor. In retirement she took up watercolor, gardening and poetry, taught painting throughout Huntingdon County, and self-published three books of poems. To her family she was Honey, a name her granddaughter Christine gave her after hearing Nelson use it.

She sent her paintings out into the world as postcards and note cards, and she taught her grandchildren to be creative, to find humor in small things, to help when they could, and to stay flexible.

Timeline

• 1930Born December 21 in Souderton, Pennsylvania, seventh of the nine children of Paul Freed Yoder and Katie Hunsicker Yoder.
• 1936The Yoder clan gathers in Souderton for the first family photograph she appears in.
• 1942Age 11, fifth grade in Souderton. Her earliest surviving artwork is from this school year.
• 1945Sophomore year; confirmed at Zwingli United Church of Christ, Souderton.
• 1948Graduates from Hilltown Township High School, then works two years to save for college, part of it in a stocking factory, making special stockings for the singer Kate Smith.
• 1949A year in Brethren Volunteer Service, Mount Airy, North Carolina; summer at Camp Fernbrook.
• 1950Follows her older sister Millie to Schauffler College for Women in Cleveland, Ohio.
• 1954Graduates from Schauffler with a degree in Christian Education and Social Work. A week later, on June 13, she marries Rev. Nelson Jerome Wenner at Zwingli Reformed Church in Souderton, with the reception at the Yoder house.
• 1956Son Mark is born. The young family moves between Newtown Square and Altoona, Pennsylvania.
• 1959Teaches at the Warminster UCC nursery school.
• 1961Daughter Karen and the household are settled in Warminster.
• 1963Son Jim joins the family; the Wenners move to Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, where Nelson serves the Abbey United Church of Christ.
• 1966Nelson becomes District Scout Executive, working with 300 leaders and 2,000 boys; they buy a house in State College across from Penn State.
• 1968The family spends the summer at Seven Mountains Boy Scout Camp, Spring Mills, which Nelson directs. Marie is teaching nursery school five mornings a week at a mothers' cooperative and, with Nelson, the senior high group at church school. Years of church camps follow at Blue Diamond and Mench Mill.
• 1968The family settles at the Fairbrook house. She starts writing down what her children say on scraps of paper, the notes she later typed up and called Jems.
• 1970Moves to Malvern, Pennsylvania. Marie teaches preschool and Sunday school and keeps the kids busy.
• 1975Moves back to central Pennsylvania, staying in Howard and Pleasant Gap.
• 1976Moves to Petersburg, Pennsylvania, where Nelson directs Camp Blue Diamond while Marie writes and volunteers.
• 1979Returns to school as an adult and earns a Master's degree in Counselor Education from Penn State, then adds elementary school counselor to a career already built on Christian education, curriculum writing, workshops and training.
• 1980Her children's story Thunder Storms is published by Professional Associates of Harrisburg, part of a set of stories she wrote to help children talk about their fears.
• 1982Moves to Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, to serve as Christian Education Director at the First Congregational Church; she stays until 1988.
• 1983Writes a column, Through Wenner's Window, for The Valley Log.
• 1987New England summers at Dan Hole Pond, Ossipee. Two of the paintings here are signed this year.
• 1988Karen marries Chris in Switzerland wearing Marie's wedding gown; Marie shows work at an art show in Harrisburg. The couple also find an empty farmhouse-turned-church at Neffs Mills, Pennsylvania, and begin looking down the road toward retirement.
• 1989Granddaughter Christine, hearing Nelson call Marie "Honey," repeats it, and the name sticks for the rest of her life.
• 1990Moves to Catasauqua, Pennsylvania. Marie is Christian Education Director at Bethlehem UCC, and Nelson supplies several United Church of Christ congregations.
• 1993Moves to Neffs Mills, where Nelson supplies UCC churches in Altoona and Marie writes, paints and entertains the grandkids.
• 1995Nelson retires on October 1 and the Neffs Mills church house becomes their full-time home. The old sanctuary becomes their great room; her studio goes upstairs in the former Sunday school rooms. “I called it our cabin,” she said, “and still do.”
• 1997Teaches a week-long class, The Stroke and Flow of Watercolor Painting, May 12–16, and is serving as vice president of the Standing Stone Art League. In September The Daily News of Huntingdon profiles the couple and their church house. Two paintings are signed this year.
• 2002She paints Ribbons of Nature, and signs and dates the back with her Neffs Mills address. Her studio there is photographed full of framed watercolors, note cards and prints. She teaches watercolor classes across Huntingdon County and is a devoted member of the Standing Stone Art League and the Friends of the Hartslog Heritage Museum.
• 2004June 13: fiftieth wedding anniversary celebration with all five grandchildren, Fogelsville, Pennsylvania.
• 2006Moves to Homewood Retirement Community in Martinsburg, Pennsylvania.
• 2011Nelson dies on January 26 after fifty-six years of marriage.
• 2012The poems begin in earnest. By 2017 she counts about a hundred of them, written in marker pen and typed up afterwards by a relative or a friend.
• 2015Receives the Schauffler Legacy Award at Defiance College, Ohio, with her sister Betty. She drafts In My Mind and Two Advantages, and writes to her granddaughter Olivia that life is OK at 85.
• 2017A run of poems in the spring and summer, written at St. John's Herr Estate and mailed out to her family: Writing Poetry, A Pill, Saturday Night, Can We Explain?, My Painting and Oh, My.
• 2021The grandchildren gather at McAlevys Fort, each holding one of her paintings.
• 2023Ninety-third birthday in Columbia, Pennsylvania, her last home, at St. John's Herr Estate.
• 2025December 21: her ninety-fifth birthday, in Columbia.
• 2026Great-granddaughter Marlo Willis Wenner is born March 14. Marie dies peacefully on August 13, at 95. She self-published three books of poetry in her lifetime.