Ludwig (Lou) Umscheid

Ludwig (Lou) Umscheid, 85, of Skillman, New Jersey, died January 14, 2023, at Princeton Medical Center after a brief COVID-related illness. A family man of deep faith, Lou is survived by his beloved wife of 55 years, Carole (née Fisher); sisters-in-law Barbara Umscheid Suarez, Lucile Fisher Noonan, and Dudley Fisher Ziebold; nephew William Umscheid (Jody Strakosch) and great-nieces Madeline and Valerie Umscheid; and many cousins. He was a dearest Uncle Lou to three generations of nieces and nephews on Carole’s side. Lou was preceded in death by his brother, William Umscheid, and niece, Theresa Umscheid Slocum.

Born in New York City’s Yorkville neighborhood on December 30, 1937, Lou was the second son of Bertha (née Gruber) and Ludwig Umscheid of Germany. As a first-generation American proud of his Bavarian roots, he enjoyed showing the city to his visiting relatives. He received an exceptional Jesuit education from Regis High School and Fordham University, where he was enrolled in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC). After college, he served in the U.S. Air Force as a weather forecaster in the Florida Panhandle. He earned master’s degrees from New York University and Adelphi University and spent his career as a research meteorologist working with numerical weather prediction models.

While working at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, he met Carole; they married in April 1967. In 1971, the couple relocated to Princeton, N.J., where Lou pursued his career at NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University Forrestal Campus, retiring after 25 years with GFDL. They moved to Pennington, N.J., in 1973, where they resided for 48 years before moving to Stonebridge at Montgomery in Skillman in the fall of 2021.

A staunch steward of the environment, Lou co-founded the Friends of Hopewell Valley Open Space, where one of his proudest achievements was the preservation of Curlis Lake Woods. While serving as chairman of the Pennington Borough Environmental Commission in 1999, he helped prepare the borough’s open space index. Lou served on the Pennington Borough Planning Board and the advisory board of the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association (now the Watershed Institute). A devout Catholic, he was a long-time parishioner at Saint Alphonsus Church in Hopewell, N.J. Retirement allowed time for Lou and Carole to travel abroad and throughout the U.S. They particularly enjoyed New York’s restaurants, ballparks, and cultural institutions, especially the Metropolitan Opera, where they were season ticket holders for nearly five decades.

A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated at Saint Alphonsus by The Rev. Msgr. Michael J. Walsh on Friday, January 27, at 11:00 a.m., followed by burial at Pennington Cemetery; Blackwell Memorial Home (www.blackwellmh.com) is handling the arrangements. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to Regis High School, the tuition-free, merit-based high school that Lou credited with giving him a strong foundation (Development Office, 55 E. 84th Street, New York, N.Y. 10028) and Montgomery Emergency Medical Services, an all-volunteer member organization that provides round-the-clock 9-1-1 service at no charge (P.O. Box 105, Belle Mead, N.J. 08502).