James Walter OPPENHEIMER

1946 - 2024  (77 years)

• Name	James Walter OPPENHEIMER
  Birth	10 Jun 1946	Butler, Butler, Pennsylvania
  Gender	Male
  Death	11 Apr 2024	Poughkeepsie, Dutchess, New York, United States
  Obituary	26 Apr 2024	Poughkeepsie, Dutchess, New York, United States   [1]
  _FSFTID	PWPR-MJ1
  _FSLINK	https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/PWPR-MJ1
  _UID	E9443211184D458BAC963FEF60386C7C9544
  Burial	Rhinebeck, Dutchess, New York, United States   [2]
  Person ID	I594788557	Carney Wehofer July 2025
  Last Modified	29 Nov 2025

  
  

  Father	Everett Walter OPPENHEIMER,   b. 26 Aug 1913, Cresskill, New Jersey, United States d. 10 May 2007, Collier County, Florida (Age 93 years)
  Mother	Helen Henderson HAYES,   b. 17 Jan 1915, Butler, Pennsylvania d. 7 Mar 2014, Naples, Florida (Age 99 years)
  Marriage	1938
  Family ID	F536734925	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	Christine Faye CRAWFORD, Oppenheimer
  Family ID	F536734924	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	28 Nov 2025

  
  

• Notes

  Obituary for James Walter Oppenheimer James Walter Oppenheimer crossed the Rainbow Bridge on 11 April 2024. He was met on the other side by over twenty cats to whom he had been a guardian, and at least one dog. With them were his parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, sister-in-law Gunda (Sporer) Oppenheimer, niece Sarah (Oppenheimer) Humphrey, and other relatives, including Edmund Burke and Col. James Smith, all of whom predeceased him. Many of Christine's relatives were there, too. Jim was born in Butler, Pennsylvania, on 10 June 1946, to Everett Walter and Helen Henderson (Hayes) Oppenheimer. Jim grew up in Butler. After high school, he began college at Washington and Lee University. Two years later, he joined the US Army for four years. He attended language school at Monterrey to learn Russian, and then went to Germany, where, in Berlin and then Schneeberg, he monitored Russian military radio transmissions. When he left the Army, Jim studied at the University of Pittsburgh. He also attended the Church of the Ascension, where he met Christine Faye Crawford, who was studying at Pitt's Graduate School of Library and Information Sciences. It was love at first sight for both of them. They began dating, and a few months later, he asked her to marry him. They waited a year to get married until her parents were on home leave from Saudi Arabia. By this time, Christine had earned her MLS degree and gotten a job. Jim originally planned to major in German at Pitt, but then switched to Psychology. After finishing his bachelor's degree in psychology, he entered Pitt's master's degree in Rehabilitation Counseling program. Toward the end of the program, a professor decided it would be fun for the students to take the New York State civil service test for Rehab Counselors. Jim's score was high enough that he got solicitations for jobs, leading to employment at Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center. He and Christine moved to Poughkeepsie. When HVPC closed several years later, he transferred to Hudson River Psychiatric Center, working there until his retirement. In the meantime, feeling nostalgia for the camaraderie of the Army, he joined the Army Reserve. This included one weekend a month, and one two-week training session a year. As a German language interrogator, in alternate years he spent those two weeks in Germany. One other "perk"(?) was that, during Desert Storm, a detachment from his unit was sent to Saudi Arabia to interrogate prisoners. Saudi Arabia provided bilingual Arabs to interpret for the interrogators. Although Christine had grown up in Saudi Arabia, they had never thought that Jim would have an opportunity to go there. In Saudi Arabia, Jim had a lot of time to think, and he decided to follow his dream of becoming an Episcopal priest by attending evening classes at New York Theological Seminary. After earning his Master's degree in Divinity, he discovered that the Church required him to go through an extensive discernment process to decide whether they would ordain him. They rejected him, and they were not required to tell him why. Jim was very broken up about this, and stopped going to church for a while, but eventually returned. In the meantime, the house in Poughkeepsie seemed to be getting smaller, and the neighborhood was going downhill. In 2000, we bought our current house, in Hyde Park. It's larger than the Poughkeepsie house, and the neighborhood is better. Jim was always interested in music, beginning as a young choir boy. He continued singing throughout his life, and later he became interested in playing renaissance and medieval musical instruments. He joined many singing and recorder groups. He had several different sizes of recorders, shawms, crumhorns, and other instruments. Christine told him that he was the reincarnation of a medieval musician who was delighted to have access to all these instruments. Groups he played and/or sang with included the Adirondack Baroque Consort, Capella Festiva, Kairos, St. John's Recorders, and the choirs of Christ Church, Poughkeepsie, and St. James Church, Hyde Park. Later in life, Jim composed and arranged music. The groups he belonged to played and sang many of his pieces, which delighted him. Christine and Jim loved to travel. They took trips while they were working, and once Christine retired, they made two or three major trips a year. During their marriage, they traveled to Austria, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, England, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Iceland, The Republic of Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Morocco, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Scotland, Spain, Switzerland, and many states in the US. When Jim coughed or was short of breath, he assumed it was because of his asthma. In August 2023, he was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer, 47 years after he had given up smoking. Then Christine discovered that the Veterans Administration said that anyone who had served in Saudi Arabia during the time Jim was there, and developed respiratory cancer, was presumed to have developed it because of that service. Jim was especially exposed to toxic smoke when Iran set 170 oil wells on fire in Kuwait. Over the next several months, Jim went through three rounds of chemotherapy and two of immunotherapy. Then doctors determined that the immunotherapy had damaged his heart, and another round of it could kill him, so they stopped it and suggested that he come home under Hospice. Jim accepted his illness with courage and grace. He always thanked personnel who did anything for him, and was especially thankful to those who performed unpleasant tasks. He was only at home for a month when he went into a mostly nonresponsive state. After five days, he died, with Christine holding his hand. Strangely, during the first two days of the coma, Jim sang almost constantlynot specific songs, but nonsense syllables like aah-ahh-ahh and la-la-la, and random musical notes. The general trend of the music didn't seem to be a particular song, but Christine caught traces of "I Did it My Way" and "To Dream the Impossible Dream." These seem appropriate songs for the end of a life, and Jim went out of life singing. Jim is survived by his brother Larry Oppenheimer and his wife Krystyna; his nephews Stephan Oppenheimer and wife Anna Lynn, and Eric Oppenheimer; and niece Anna (Oppenheimer) Jesus and her husband John. His survivors also include six grand-nieces and two grand-nephews: Mireille and Henderson Oppenheimer, Kinley and Waverly Oppenheimer, and Aurelia, Evelyn, Atticus, and Clementine Jesus. Jim was buried in the Natural Burial Ground of the Town of Rhinebeck [NY] Cemetery on 17 April 2024. The family will hold a Celebration of Jim's Life later this year after potential participants can be organized. Anyone who wishes to be notified of arrangements should contact Christine. We thank the staffs of Hudson Valley Hospice and St. James Episcopal Church for their help and support during this difficult time. Gifts in memory of Jim can be sent to St. James' Church, 4526 Albany Post Rd, Hyde Park, NY 12538 (checks made out to St. James' Church), the American Recorder Society, P.O. Box 480054, Charlotte, NC 28269-5300, or the Dutchess County SPCA, 636 Violet Avenue, Hyde Park, NY 12538. Document Information Collection Information United States, Obituary Records, 2014-2023 Learn more about this collection through the FamilySearch Wiki. Cite This Record "United States, Obituary Records, 2014-2023", FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XM5X-WVRX : Sun Mar 30 10:41:00 UTC 2025), Entry for James Walter Oppenheimer and Gunda Sporer Oppenheimer, 26 April 2024.

  
  

• Sources

  [S1160] The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, FamilySearch Family Tree (http://www.familysearch.org), ((http://www.familysearch.org)), accessed 28 Nov 2025), entry for James OPPENHEIMER, person ID PWPR-MJ1. (Reliability: 3). [S1160] The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, FamilySearch Family Tree (http://www.familysearch.org), ((http://www.familysearch.org)), accessed 28 Nov 2025), entry for James Walter OPPENHEIMER, person ID PWPR-MJ1. (Reliability: 3).