Constance Woodford
Constance “Connie” Woodford, of Princeton, passed away peacefully on Wednesday, June 3, 2026, after a brief illness at Princeton Medical Center. She was 87.
A longtime member of the greater Princeton community, she was born in Warsaw, NY, later moving to Chittenango, NY, where she was a 1957 graduate of Chittenango High School. She went on to attend Skidmore College, earning a BFA in 1961.
Connie met her future husband, Charles, in 1967 while working at Harper & Row in Manhattan, where he was her supervisor. They married in 1969 at the Princeton Unitarian Church and settled in an old farmhouse in Somerset County. During this time, Connie worked at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School. In 1973, Charles left Harper & Row, and together they founded Princeton Book Company, Publishers. As Vice President and Editor in Chief, Connie edited and contributed to dozens of books before her retirement in 2023.
Connie was an avid reader and a member of two book clubs, one of which was featured in a Wall Street Journal article. She treasured discussing literature with lifelong friends. Also a devoted gardener and member of the Contemporary Garden Club of Princeton, she spent many hours tending to her beautiful flowers in her yard on Carter Road.
A great lover of the arts, she frequently attended the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, the Metropolitan Opera and never missed an opening at the Whitney. Well into her 80s, Connie would drive herself into New York to see an exhibit, usually followed by a glass of wine.
She volunteered at the Mercer Street Friends center, the League of Women Voters, and WNET Channel 13, the local PBS affiliate. During her time as a volunteer producer at Channel 13, she worked on segments highlighting public interest stories about New Jersey, earning the “Best Use of 30 Seconds” award from the station.
Connie’s greatest source of pride and joy was being Grammie to her three granddaughters. She had a wonderful imagination, and combined with her artistic talent could spend hours entertaining them. Connie will be remembered for her intellect, humor, creativity, and adventurous spirit. She was an eternal optimist who brought joy into every life she touched.
Connie is predeceased by her parents Howard and Eleanor (Pennock) Foote, and her brother Charles P. Foote. She is survived by her husband of 57 years, Charles H. Woodford, her son John Woodford (Deborah Yautz), her daughter Alexandra Woodford Jennings (Jeffrey Jennings), and three grandchildren Finlay Jennings, Chloe Jennings, and Sophia Woodford.
Services will be held at 11 a.m. on Saturday, June 20 at Nassau Presbyterian Church, 61 Nassau Street, Princeton, NJ 08540. She will be laid to rest in Princeton Cemetery, burial will be private.
Arrangements are under the direction of The Mather-Hodge Funeral Home, Princeton, NJ.
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Linda S. Bowker
June 23, 1931 – June 3, 2026
Linda Bowker, 94, of Sun City Center, FL, formerly of Princeton Junction, NJ, and East Middlebury, VT, passed away peacefully on June 3, 2026. She was born in Worcester, MA, and spent her early childhood in nearby Shrewsbury.
She is preceded in death by her loving husband and constant companion John; her parents, Duane and Margaret Sprague; and siblings Jean Kiendl, Duane Sprague, and Carlton Sprague. She is survived by their three children, Wendy Lodge, John S Bowker (Joanne) and Denise Bowker; six grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren; and numerous nieces and nephews.
Linda was a member of Pi Beta Phi sorority at the University of Vermont. Linda’s career started as a tech in one of Rutgers University’s computer lab and progressed to the go-to person for analyzing data for RCA-GE Astro Space Division. She retired from RCA-GE in 1989 to travel the country with John.
Linda was involved projects all her life, from sewing to little league concessions, to household improvements. She will always be known for the WHISTLE. The Bowker kids knew to come running.
Following her retirement, John and Linda traveled to all 48 contiguous states in their beloved “Roo” motorhome, visiting many quilting shops. After settling in Sun City Center, John and Linda became active members in the volunteer emergency squad where they worked as dispatchers for over 20 years. They were very active in the SCC New England Society, and hosted numerous events throughout the years. Linda loved the Sew ‘n Sews club, and was known for her skills in making all of her own clothes plus doll clothes that have been donated around the area.
The one constant in Linda’s life starting at age 15, was the presence of John. They met at his 16th birthday party, dated through high school and college, and were married on August 17, 1953 in the Congregational Church in Middlebury. For nearly 80 years, they were never more than an arm’s length from each other, greeting each other with a kiss every day they were married. She lived for 108 days without him, and that was enough. On their way to forever together.
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John Vincent Fleming
John Vincent Fleming died on Saturday, May 30, 2026. He was an American literary scholar and the Louis W. Fairchild ‘24 Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Emeritus at Princeton.
John was born on May 20, 1936 in Mountain Home, Arkansas, and graduated from The University of the South (Sewanee) in 1958. After studying at Jesus College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar, he earned a Ph.D. in medieval literature from Princeton University in 1963. He then taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for two years. John returned to Princeton as an assistant professor of English in 1965, where he followed in the footsteps of the great Chaucerian D.W. Robertson, teaching generations of Princeton undergraduates about the world of the Middle Ages.
John Fleming served as chair of the Princeton Department of English, Master of Wilson College, faculty director of the Program in Freshman Seminars, and was a founding member of the Department of Comparative Literature in 1978. He was the dissertation director of renowned scholars of medieval literature, and wrote extensively in the fields of medieval English and European literature, medieval art history, and the history of Christian thought and spirituality. During his 40 years on the Princeton faculty, he won the Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Teaching and the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award.
From 1995 to 2006, John authored a weekly column in The Daily Princetonian, titled “Gladly Lerne, Gladly Teche” (a reference to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales), and revived this column under the same name as a blog attached to his website. He was active in numerous learned societies, including the Medieval Academy of America, where he served as president. John was also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the American Philosophical Society. John’s appearance at countless alumni events, from Princeton to London to Hong Kong, earned him the Alumni Council Award for Service to Princeton in 2004.
After 40 years at Princeton, John transitioned to emeritus status in 2006. In retirement, he expanded his field of scholarly writing beyond medieval subjects. His study of classic anti-Communist literature entitled The Anti-Communist Manifestos was published in 2009, and was awarded the annual book prize of the New Jersey Council for the Humanities in the following year. In 2013, John published The Dark Side of the Enlightenment, showing how impulses of the European Enlightenment — generally associated with great strides in the liberation of human thought from superstition and traditional religion — were challenged by tenacious religious ideas or channeled into the “darker” esoteric and occult pursuits. He returned to formal scholarly publication in 2017 with a monograph on the Portuguese Renaissance poet Luis de Camões, and John continued to publish occasional commissioned essays and book reviews.
At Princeton, his wit was widely appreciated and often recorded in a sporadic column titled “Professorial Chrestomathy,” which included the following remark during his course The World of the Middle Ages: “In the first week of class, you saw all my ties. In the second week of class, you saw all my shirts. It’s now the third week of class, and you’ve heard all of my ideas. I don’t know what we’re going to do for the rest of the semester.”
John was married to Joan E. Fleming, a retired priest in the Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey. He is survived by Joan and their children Richard Arthur Fleming (b. 1964), a sound-recording engineer, artist, and travel writer; Katherine Elizabeth Fleming (b. 1966), a prize-winning historian and university administrator, and current President and CEO of the Getty Foundation; and Luke Owles Fleming (b. 1978), a linguistic anthropologist. He is also survived by six grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
A memorial service will be held at Princeton University Chapel on Friday, September 25, at 1:30 pm.
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Herbert Robson Foster, Jr.
Herbert Robson Foster, Jr., died peacefully in his home in Princeton on Monday, June 1, 2026, surrounded by family, shortly before his 94th birthday.
Herb was born in Oakland, CA, on June 21, 1932 to Sarah Abbey Williamson and Herbert “Jack” Robson Foster, and grew up in Piedmont, CA. After Sarah’s death he was raised by Jack and his adoptive mother Frankie Foster.
He attended Stanford University as an undergraduate and went on to earn a Master’s and Ph.D. in chemical engineering at the University of WA. After an early career in chemical process control, Herb learned computer programming and software design as these became important in his field.
By his early 40s, software development and testing were the primary focus of Herb’s work. The last 31 years of his career were at Siemens. He retired at age 85.
A lifelong engineer, Herb loved to tinker. He repaired the family cuckoo clock countless times, and designed a complex attic fan door system à la Rube Goldberg. He fashioned his own bicycle snow tires before they were commercially available by driving hundreds of screws through the tires so he could ride in icy conditions.
He was a lifelong cyclist, commuting to work along the Lake Carnegie tow path every day, and loved pausing to watch wildlife along the water.
Although he greatly enjoyed hang gliding, zip lining, scuba, and wilderness trekking, Herb switched to safer pursuits once he became a father. His children remember him body surfing in the Atlantic, sparring with inflatable boxing gloves, and running laps around the house barefoot in the snow.
Herb loved classical music, to play and sing as well as to listen to. Over his lifetime he sang in many choirs, often practiced while washing dishes, and was a popular singer to stand next to during hymns at the UU Congregation of Princeton.
He played every brass instrument except the tuba, which has a mouthpiece that didn’t fit between his long nose and sharp chin.
In later years he focused on the French horn, playing in Blawenburg Band, the South Orange Symphony, and many local ensembles.
Other pastimes included building and flying model airplanes, building a computer from a kit in the mid-1980s, kite building and flying, and bowling. He will be remembered as honest, curious, loyal, trustworthy, and funny.
Herb is survived by his wife of 48 years, Eva Liane Foster; his daughter Anne Marie Foster and her husband Mike Kupfer; daughter Sarah Liane Foster, her husband Jacob Ellul-Blake, and their daughter Calliope Ellul Foster; daughter Katherine Frances Foster; and several nieces and nephews. His sisters Catherine Labourdette and Sally Lix predeceased him.
A memorial service for Herb will be held at a future date TBD. In lieu of flowers please donate to starisland.org/donate-online, or uuprinceton.org/give-now (memo: in memory of Herb Foster, for Social Justice Fund).
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Julia Zemanovich Hosford
Julia Zemanovich Hosford passed away peacefully on June 3, 2026 at Brandywine Senior Living at Princeton at the age of 95. She was born November 17, 1930, in Hillside, New Jersey, the youngest child of John and Catherine (Sedivy) Zemanovich. She grew up in Hillside where her parents, Slovak immigrants, owned a grocery store/butcher shop.
She first married her high school sweetheart, Jerry Kent, in 1951. They moved to Princeton in 1955 where Julie spent the rest of her life. She and Jerry divorced in 1971.
Julie’s first trip overseas was in 1970, when she and her daughter went to Paris on a group trip organized by Princeton High School. It was a life-changing experience. Especially memorable was the dinner where she ordered choucroute, not knowing what it was, only to be delighted to discover it was the French equivalent of the Slovak kielbasa and sauerkraut she knew at home.
That trip was the beginning of a lifelong love of food and travel. In 1972 she married Bob Hosford. Julie and Bob subsequently made many trips to Europe — Italy, Portugal, Paris, Slovakia — and throughout the United States. They thought nothing of driving to Hoboken for bread or to Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn for dried fruit, nuts, and spices, always sharing their bounty with family and friends. New York City was a frequent destination for dining, music, and ballet.
In her prime, Julie was an excellent and enthusiastic cook, taking classes in French, Indian, and Chinese cooking. She had file folders full of recipes clipped from the New York Times, Gourmet magazine, and elsewhere. Her cookbooks were well-worn, tattered, and splattered, with hand scribbled notes throughout. Her Christmas Eve bouillabaisses were delicious and memorable. She was always eager to try new restaurants and different cuisines.
She worked for 45 years as secretary to the sales director at Management Planning, Inc., a small consulting firm in Princeton, NJ, finally retiring in 2011 at age 80. She was the company grammarian, schooling the junior financial analysts in the proper usage of the English language.
Anyone who met Julie never forgot her. She was a talker. Always outspoken, though friendly and approachable, she was unfiltered and would say whatever came to mind. She was a lifelong and ardent Democrat.
Julie was an avid reader, reading the New York Times every day from start to finish, and eager to discuss the topics of the day. Another favorite pastime was going to the movies.
In addition to her parents and husband, she was predeceased by her sister, Mary Zemanovich Best, and her two brothers, George Zemanovic and Edward Zemanovich. She is survived by her daughter, Christine Kent (Jack Roosma) and son, Matthew Kent (Sandra Bovee) and many nieces and nephews.
Family and friends are invited to share memories and celebrate Julie’s life on June 24, 2026, at 10 a.m. at Mather-Hodge Funeral Home, 40 Vandeventer Avenue, Princeton, NJ.