Louise Keffer Biemer's Obituary
Louise Keffer Biemer, 90, passed away on Feb. 20, 2025. She was born April 4, 1934, in Trenton, NJ, the fifth of six children born to John and Elizabeth (O’Hara) Keffer. She graduated from Cathedral High School in Trenton, and, inspired by the nurses who took care of her father after a heart attack, she earned her RN at St. Francis Medical Center, and began working as a school nurse at Rosemont College, outside Philadelphia. She met her husband, James Biemer, a physician, through her older brother Jack, his friend at Villanova University. They married in 1956, started a family and moved around the country as Dr. Biemer completed 11 years of service in the US Navy: Maryland, Virginia, Massachusetts, California, and back to New Jersey, before settling in Tampa, FL. In recent years, they lived at the Oak Hammock retirement community in Gainesville, FL. They were married for 67 years.
Mrs. Biemer would say her greatest pride and joy was raising eight kids: Mary, Jim, George, Liz, Weeze, and John, and her adopted grandsons Mike and Chris. She was a good mom. She read bedtime stories, helped with homework, took care of the kids when they were sick, volunteered as the school nurse, chaperoned on field trips and took them to celebrate with ice cream sundaes when they got good grades. She was a talented seamstress and made dresses for the girls. She loved her grandkids and her great grandkids and her large extended Keffer family. She also loved her dogs – from her beloved Mickey she had as a girl to Sandy, Amber, and Molly, her three beautiful golden retrievers she had later on.
Mrs. Biemer was a devout Catholic, for many years a daily Mass-goer and served as a Eucharistic minister. She loved singing, had a lovely voice and told all about the operettas she performed in during high school. She loved her Irish heritage and on a family trip to Ireland in 1986 they tracked down the tiny home in County Donegal that her grandmother grew up in (it was being used as a chicken shack).
It may have been the Irish in her, but Mrs. Biemer loved to chat. She loved puns and wordplay. She had sayings she often repeated, like “To those whom much is given, much is expected,” “The Lord helps those who help themselves,” "Many hands make light work," and, most of all, “Family First.” She welcomed big crowds of friends and family to their Tampa home on Lake Carroll, and always kept a fridge full of 2-liter bottles of Coke and Breyer’s ice cream for guests. Scores of northern Spring Breakers came to know our house as “Camp Biemer.”
Mrs. Biemer loved New Jersey and was proud to call herself a “Jersey girl,” but she especially loved the Jersey Shore. When she was a young girl, her family spent many wonderful summers at her Grandpa O’Hara’s house in Wildwood Crest. In 1991, Dr. and Mrs. Biemer bought a summer home in Stone Harbor, NJ, leading their kids to have to explain, many times, why a family from Florida would have a beach house in New Jersey. But they fell in love with Stone Harbor, too so now Mrs. Biemer’s children, grandchildren and great grandchildren have their own cherished memories of the Jersey Shore.
Mrs. Biemer is survived by her brother, Joseph Keffer, her sons James Biemer Jr. (Nhi), George Biemer and John Biemer (Joanne), her daughters Elizabeth Sanchez (Robert) and Louise McGuire, her adopted grandsons Michael Biemer (Lauren) and Christopher Biemer, nine additional grandchildren and two great grandchildren. She is pre-deceased by her husband, Dr. James Biemer, her daughter, Mary, her brother John Keffer, and her sisters Elizabeth Wetzel, Rita Fitzpatrick and Rosemary Leadem.
A funeral mass will be held at Queen of Peace Catholic Community in Gainesville, FL, on Monday, April 7, at 10 a.m. followed by interment at the columbarium. In lieu of flowers donations may
be made in Mrs. Biemer’s name to Catholic Relief Services, 228 W. Lexington St., Baltimore, MD 21201-3413.
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