Kenneth A. Kirchhofer, retired educator
Kenneth A. Kirchhofer, a retired private school educator and volunteer, died Sunday of complications from Alzheimer’s disease at Union Memorial Hospital. The TuscanyCanterbury resident, who earlier had lived in Timonium, was 75.
Kenneth Allan Kirchhofer, the son of Dr. Lewis K. Kirchhofer, a physician, and his wife, Florence Kirchhofer, a homemaker, was born in Springfield, Pennsylvania, and raised there. He attended Lansdowne Friends and graduated in 1962 from Friends Central School in Philadelphia.
He was a 1966 graduate of Middlebury College, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and international relations while minoring in French and German. He obtained a master’s degree in 1974 in international relations from the University of Delaware.
An educator for 38 years who taught history as well as French and German, he began his teaching career at Moorestown Friends in Moorestown, New Jersey. He later joined the faculty of the Moravian Academy in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he taught until 1991 when he began teaching at the West Nottingham Academy in Colora.
From 1996 to 2000, he taught at Trinity Preparatory School in Winter Park, Florida, until 2000, when he returned to teach at Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School in Pikesville. In 2002, he began teaching at Loyola Blakefield and in 2006, began driving for the Garrison Forest School Health Center. He retired in 2013.
The former 15-year Timonium resident, who moved to TuscanyCanterbury two years ago, volunteered at the Villa Maria School where he worked teaching children in the school’s prevocational program.
He was described in a profile provided by his family as a “manof warmth, kindness and much humor. Many of his students kept in touch with him over the years. He was always seeking a way to return to giving to children.”
In 1991, he married Elena Michelson, a Shepherd Pratt social worker, and the couple enjoyed traveling to France, Italy, Sicily, Germany, Ireland and Canada.
Mr. Kirchhofer was an active member of the Towson Unitarian Universalist Church, 1710 Dulaney Valley Road, Lutherville, where a memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. March 28.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by a stepdaughter, Olivia Elir of West Lafayette, Indiana; a sister, Beth Kitchhofer Hague, of Nazareth, Pennsylvania; and a niece.