Obituary from NYT December 19, 2014
GUIHER--James M., Jr.,
died on December 17 in Columbia, Maryland. Beloved husband of Elizabeth "Liddy" Hart Guiher and father of Catharine Brownfield Guiher and Deborah Guiher Chamblee. The only child of Ruth Souders and James M. Guiher, Sr., he was born in Clarksburg, WV, on February 21, 1927. He was raised in Clarksburg and graduated from Washington Irving High School in 1945. After military service as Private First Class in the army in post-WWII occupied Germany, he attended Princeton University on the GI bill, class of 1951. He attended Harvard Law School, but did not finish, opting instead to get an MFA degree from the Museum School of Fine Arts in Boston in 1954. He married Liddy in 1954 and they settled in New York City. Jim worked for Prentice-Hall publishing company, where he rose to be the sponsoring editor for art and geology books. His crowning achievement there was publishing the textbook edition of H.W. Janson's "History of Art." Later, he became editor-in-chief of the elementary and high school textbooks division. He retired from publishing in 1976 to pursue a writing career and intellectual pursuits. Valuing the wisdom of Greek pagan culture, he wrote two Greek-themed plays, "Aphrodite" and "Candoo!", which he self-published in 2010. In later life, he had become increasingly concerned about political discord and religious intolerance, both in the United States and around the world, and felt that the Greek philosophy of "everything in moderation, nothing to excess" held the key to the world's problems. Jim devoted great efforts to preserving family history and artifacts. He ensured that the avant- garde films of Liddy's uncle, Jim Davis, were housed at Anthology Film Archives, curated by Robert Haller, and that numerous family historical documents were housed at the West Virginia and Regional History Center at the University of West Virginia, curated by John Cuthbert. After living in NYC for 60 years, he moved to Maryland in October 2014 to Charlestown retirement community, where his daughter Deborah works. He was looking forward to a new chapter of his life, and to continue working on disseminating his wisdom and insights through his writings, but increasingly nagging health issues resulted in his time being cut short. His parting wish for humanity is for people around the world to follow a path of moderation rather than fanaticism. He was pre-deceased by his wife, Liddy, in 2011. He is survived by his two daughters, Catharine (Brooklyn, NY) and Deborah (Columbia, MD), his son-in-law Jeff Chamblee, and two grandchildren, Rebecca Guiher Chamblee and Benjamin Guiher Chamblee. The funeral will be held at the Davis Funeral Home in Clarksburg, WV on Saturday January 3 at 11:00am. A memorial will be held in New York City at a later date. In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Avenue, New York, NY 10003; or the West Virginia and Regional History Center, c/o WVU Foundation (IMO Jim Guiher FUND 2U139), PO Box 1650 -Morgantown, WV 26507-1650.
