December 21, 1927 – April 6, 2022
Inge Snipes died peacefully on the evening of April 6, 2022 at Kendall in Longwood in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. She was 94 years old. She enjoyed an active and full life guided by Quaker principles, her passion for social justice, environmental concerns, the arts, and love for her family.
Inge was born in Hahn, Germany in 1927. At the age of two she emigrated to the United States on the SS Berlin with her sister Hildegard and mother Ida Longerich. There they joined her father, Rudy, who emigrated two years earlier. The family lived in northern New Jersey during her school years.
In 1941, while in high school, her mother took her to visit the Montclair Friends Meeting. This introduction to Quakerism would become a huge influence in her life, which led her to become active in many causes. Two years later, when she was 17, she applied for membership in the Religious Society of Friends.
After graduating from high school, Montclair Friends Meeting offered her a scholarship to Guilford College, a Quaker College, in Greensboro, North Carolina. Before leaving for Guilford, Montclair’s meeting sent her to the American Friends Service Committee summer camp devoted to international relations. This was a great experience for someone who had never read a newspaper before. In her memoir “Only in America,” she describes in her own words how, after gaining support, a poor immigrant girl developed into a thriving individual, committed to Quaker ideals, active and socially engaged in her community. She wrote, “By sending me to Shawnee on the Delaware, a week-long camp on international relations… the Montclair friends have illuminated my deepest philosophical foundations, and made their ideals royal.”
At Guilford College she continued to expand and explore her new interests. In addition, she was selected to join the North Carolina hockey team, and sang in the Guilford College A Cappella Choir. When she was a sophomore, she first met her future husband, Bradshaw Snipes. She recalled her first impression, “God’s light shines through his eyes.” After graduating in 1949, they married at a meeting of the Friends of Montclair.
After college and marriage, Angie and Brad immediately began working at Brad’s Alma Mater George High School, a Quaker high school in Newtown, Pennsylvania. There, studying for four years, Inge became an assistant dean for girls and a coach for girls’ hockey.
In 1953, Angie and Brad left George School to run the Brad family farm, Snipes farm and nursery, along with Brad brothers Tom and Sam Snipes. Angie had four children and, together with her sister-in-law Barb Snipes, who gave birth to six children, they focused on caring for and raising healthy families. On one occasion, while they were observing their active children, Engy said, “If parents see us now, they think we have nothing to do. But that is the job.” She loved him.
At the same time in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Engy joined the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and Women Strike for Peace, and was active on many social, cultural and environmental issues. In 1957, she was involved in helping the black Myers family move to the white area of Levittown, Pennsylvania. An angry mob protested at night while Inge and others stood vigil outside Myers’ house to protect the family. It also joined the protests against atomic atmospheric testing. Studies have shown that the strontium 90 released by the test was contaminating the milk and food supply, and was even present on the family farm. Children were particularly susceptible to uptake of strontium-90, so Engi’s great interest. Protests led to the ban on air testing in 1963.
Protests against militarism, the Vietnam War, and unequal civil rights were other prominent issues. In March 1963, she went to Poland with the WILPF to visit the Polish Women’s League to promote common goals. Later in 1963, Angie and her brother-in-law Sam Snipes attended a civil rights rally in Washington, D.C. where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.
In 1968, as her children grew up and became more independent, Engi became interested in Reassessment Counseling, a peer counseling program. With Carol Beamles, she opened Personal Advisors for Bucks County. After the consulting center closed in 1979, and following an often-repeated pattern, Inge shifted her focus, following her interests and passions into a new field. In 1980, the family farm business expanded and Inge became the new self-appointed General Manager. Over the following years, Snipes Farm and Nursery continued to expand, entering the list of the 100 Best Garden Centers in the United States.
After 10 years as a business manager, Inge changed her focus again by retiring and taking up photography. Following her passion and creative drive, she got involved in photography, moving from film to digital to computer generated images. Advancing from nature photography, she began looking for colorful patterns in her surroundings. Then intensified through computer manipulation to produce abstract compositions saturated with colour. This will become another constant in her life, as she searches for herself and surrounds her with color and color combinations. She has also posted winning entries in photo competitions from National Geographic and the University of California.
In 2006, Inge moved to Kendal in the Longwood community for retirement, where she continued to pursue her passions and interests, becoming active in the Horticultural Committee, Kendal Bonsai Society, Choir, and German Club.
Always devoted to her family, she wrote that her happiest moments were with her children around her. Angie and Brad are survived by their children – Hannah Hogan, Amy Snipes, Danielle Snipes, Ann Snipes Moss, ten grandchildren and sixteen great-grandchildren.
Alternatively, flower donations may be made to the American Friends Service Committee or the Kendal Charitable Trusts.
Arrangements by Kuzo Funeral Home of Kennett Square, PA.
Published online on April 14, 2022
Published in the Bucks County Courier Times
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