Obituary: Sara Penhale

Sara Jane Penhale, born on Sept. 13, 1949, died on Feb. 22, 2026, of complications from Parkinson’s Disease. 

But over the course of her 76 years, she lived a rich and fulfilling life, both as a cherished Earlham College faculty member and as an inveterate traveler, who visited about 75 countries around the world.

Sara was born in St. Louis, and lived there until attending Earlham College, from which she graduated in 1971. She went on to receive a Master’s degree in Biology from Miami University and another MA in Library Science from Indiana University. She taught for several years in the Western College Program at Miami University, then for another few years at Earlham, before becoming Science Librarian at Earlham, a position she held for 30 years.

Sara was a highly respected member of the Earlham College faculty. She served on virtually every faculty committee, including a term as clerk. In addition to working in the Earlham’s Wildman Science Library, she took great joy in leading semester-long foreign study programs, first to Kenya and then to Tanzania. Starting in 1987, she led 7 such programs over the course of her career, learning to speak Swahili in the process. On several occasions, she also took new students on weeks-long canoe trips to the wilderness of the Boundary Waters near Canada. She was a born teacher, who loved working with students, both home and abroad.

Suffering from Parkinson’s Disease for the past 20 years, she kept herself active, walking and hiking whenever she could. One of her proudest achievements was founding the Rock Steady Boxing Program in Oxford. This was a national program to provide exercise for people with Parkinson’s. Sara brought the team from Richmond, Indiana to a support group she had also helped found, and got them to partner with Miami University to open up a branch here. When it closed, for its own internal reasons, she got TriHealth to partner with Miami, and the program flourishes to this day.

Sara served as a member of the board of Cincinnati Parkinson’s Support and Wellness and helped organize a number of conferences for the Cincinnati community. She was also particularly proud to provide a patient’s perspective to one of those conferences aimed at 500 Parkinson’s patients in Cincinnati several years ago. She gave a powerful 15-minute address about her own experiences and thoughts that was met with a standing ovation.

Sara was also a dedicated craft person. About a year and a half ago, she teamed up with Nancy Taylor, a weaver, and her husband Brent Smith, a wood worker, to put on a month-long show at the Oxford Community Arts Center. Sara included about 50 of her small pieces featuring both punch-needle embroidery and ceramic mosaic pictures in an absolutely wonderful show.

In her retirement, Sara worked as a volunteer at McCullough-Hyde’s Daisy Shop. She was a member of Des Fleurs garden club. She loved to cook and to entertain, and at one point cooked every recipe in one of Julia Child’s famous cookbooks. She also took great pleasure in serving as a kind of surrogate mother to the several dozen Kenyan students she and her husband helped come study in the United States.

Sara’s Parkinson’s became more difficult in the past year. And last August, when she had the revision of a knee replacement done 13 years ago, things went from bad to worse. She endured 10 surgeries over a six-month period, in a process complicated by her Parkinson’s, until she finally succumbed.

She is survived by Allan Winkler, her husband of 33 years, her sister Polly and partner Bruce Chalker, her stepchildren Jenny and David, Jenny’s husband Eyal Oren and grandchildren Jacob and Ari, and her sister-in-law Karen Moulton, and Karen’s husband Dave, and their son Mike, as well as by the colleagues, family and friends who enriched her life.

Donations for those who wish to contribute can be made to Earlham College and/or the Oxford Community Arts Center.

This obituary was submitted to the Oxford Free Press.