Jack Asher Honored
Longtime FPCG member honored by Lutheran Seminary
Jack Asher, and his brother, Robert, were recently honored recently by The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia by being presented with the Soli Deo Gloria Award.
The award is given for outstanding leadership and service to the church and to the mission of the Seminary. Jack has served on the Seminary’s President’s Council and provided strong leadership for the organization’s capital campaigns and strategic planning. In accepting the honor, Jack noted that the Seminary was “one of the signature places that I always remember.”
During the awards’ ceremony, 60 singers of the 150-member Keystone State Boychoir serenaded Asher and his wife, Carolyn, with a special performance dedicated to him. Asher was one of the founding members of the board of the Boychoir which calls First Church its home. The directors of the choir are Joe “Fitz” Fitzmartin and Steven M. Fisher.
As a lifetime chocolatier and co-chair of Asher’s Chocolates, formerly of Germantown but now of Lewistown, Jack Asher was elected to the Candy Hall of Fame in 2006. In addition to his Presbyterian and Lutheran connections, he has served as President of the Germantown Business Association, President of the Whosoever Gospel Mission, President of the Germantown Historical Society, and the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf. Further, he ahs served as a volunteer firefighter for 35 years and is the leading supporter of the Battle of Germantown held each October on the ground of Cliveden. The Ashers are the parents of three children.
Jack’s brother, Robert, who was unable to attend the ceremony, is the co-chair of Asher’s Chocolates and the President of Robert Asher Associates. He is an elder in the Oreland Evangelical Presbyterian Church and is as civic-minded as his brother, a member of numerous community and political organizations and boards.
The Lutheran Theological Seminary, founded in 1864, is one of eight seminaries of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Its 14-acre campus in Mt. Airy to which the seminary moved in 1888, is part of a larger property on which one of the founding members of The First Presbyterian Church lived. Joseph Miller, the first organist from approximately 1812 to 1832, was also the first treasurer of the Vestry (today’s Session).
Heartiest congratulations, Jack Asher!
--Adapted by Sam Whyte from an unsigned article in the December 16, 2011, issues of the Mt. Airy Times Express.