Martha Jane Turner Rohrer, 96, of Philadelphia, died Nov. 2, 2024, in the Mount Airy home and art studio she created with her husband, artist Warren Rohrer.

She was born Oct. 11, 1928, in Broadway, Va., to Charles Casper Turner and Mildred Elizabeth Shoemaker Turner. She attended Eastern Mennonite School and Eastern Mennonite College in Harrisonburg, Va., before marrying classmate Eby Warren Rohrer in 1948. The couple moved to suburban Philadelphia, where two sons, Jon and Dean, were born. In 1961, the family moved to a small farm in Christiana, renovating the property and tending a large garden while Warren pursued an art career and taught at the Philadelphia College of Art.

In 1984 the Rohrers moved to a repurposed barn formerly used by artist Violet Oakley and her companion Edith Emerson, director of the Woodmere Art Museum. During renovation of the property, architects John Lawson and Lorna Katz, struck by Jane’s eye for quality and color and her sense of organization, hired her to work for their firm. Her wit, irreverence, resourcefulness, courage and style sustained the couple through Warren’s long struggle with leukemia.

In 2002, at the age of 74, Jane published her first book, Life After Death. The elegiac poems evoke mourning for her husband and the cultural implications of their shared connection with the land. International travel, as a guest of her brother Charles, returned Jane to life and to writing. These experiences inspired her 2020 chapbook, Acquiring Land,which also includes whimsical and frank poems that gaze at life’s end and examine conventional notions of property ownership.

Surviving are two sons, Jon W. (Priscilla) and Dean M. (Clair) of Philadelphia; three granddaughters and a great-granddaughter; sister Eva Nell Shaffer of Harrisonburg and brother Charles Casper Turner II, of Weyers Cave, Va. She was preceded in death by sister Mary June and brothers Paul Frederick and Millard Wilton.