Jo Ann Klemmer
Honoring a Shared Love

Menninger is fortunate to be a part of Mrs. Jo Ann Klemmer’s estate. She knows The Clinic very well, having worked as an assistant in Dr. Karl Menninger’s office in Topeka, Kansas, for several years after graduating from Washburn University in 1953.

It was at Menninger that Jo Ann met her future husband, Herb Klemmer, a longtime director of Menninger’s School of Psychiatry. Herb and Jo Ann wed on November 27, 1963, and had been married for 37 years when Herb died in 2000. Their marriage was “a journey into our hearts where we found the reality of love.”

In addition to making very generous gifts to help build Menninger’s Mental Health Epicenter in Houston, Jo Ann established a planned gift to support Menninger’s psychiatric resident training. The Jo Ann and Herbert Klemmer Resident Training Fund is an endowed memorial to their marriage and their shared belief in the importance of expertly trained psychiatrists being in as many American towns and cities as possible.