Jun 30, 2026 By Garrett Neese 6 min read

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one in a monthlong series of profiles of the people who live and work in Washington, Greene and Fayette counties, in celebration of the nation’s 250th anniversary.

Whenever Jean Turcheck would travel — for work meetings in the United States, or her 17 trips for fun to Europe — she’d sample the local fare and buy a cookbook so she could bring the experience back home.

“I had terrific wienerschnitzel in Vienna, and I got an Austrian cookbook to make strudel and wienerschnitzel and red cabbage and apples in wine and potato pancakes and stuff like that,” she said. “You can see I’m not skinny. I like to eat, and I enjoyed my travels very, very much.”

Turcheck, of Smithfield, isn’t globetrotting like she used to, but she’s still learning and enjoying life.

She was born in Washington, but grew up on a 300-acre farm in Greene County between Clarksville and Jefferson.

Turcheck took music lessons from the time she was young. For extra spending money, she played the organ at St. Michael’s in Fredericktown.

It was a quiet childhood, where she and her best friend would go to the local malls and movies together once they learned how to drive.

“We were always on the go, but in a rural setting it’s a little bit difficult,” she said. “You’re not part of the gang as you are in a little, tightly knit community where the kids play softball together and go to each other’s houses on a daily basis.”

At Seton Hill College in Greensburg, Turcheck started out as a pre-law student.

That changed in her freshman year, where she was mistakenly placed in a chemistry class for majors.

She tried to get out of it. But her academic dean, a “very tall, stately lady” named Sister Mary Leon Bettwy, had other ideas.

“I said, ‘I don’t think I’ll do well in chemistry,'” Turcheck said. “She said, ‘Well, I think you’re OK. Your achievement test scores were good. You’ll survive.'”

She did more than that. Turcheck graduated with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry before going to Duquesne University, where she got a job managing the science lab.

There, too, someone saw her potential.

The chairman, concerned about what Turcheck’s future would look like after she left Duquesne, asked her if she wanted to become a master’s student in chemistry.

She would, and she did, earning a master’s after working at the lab by day and going to class at night.

From there, she moved to the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Medicine, where she served as assistant to the chairman. She worked with virologist Dr. Julius Youngner, who helped develop the first polio vaccine.

“He’s the one that did all the work and (Jonas) Salk got all the credit,” Turcheck said.

It was a demanding role, assisting in the coursework for biochemistry and microbiology, and taking charge of the tests, grading and posting scores.

Working with the students was rewarding. If their parent wasn’t a doctor, which smoothed the path to admission, they had to be “quite outstanding,” Turcheck said.

Turcheck’s years at Pitt ended when a new chairman decided to let her go. She heard later the reason was the other women in the workplace were jealous of her.

“I don’t know how true that is, but somebody gave me some insight,” she said. “I said, ‘There was no reason to be jealous of me,’ and they said, ‘Oh, yes, there was. You had a lot going for you.'”

But if there’s one thing life has taught her, Turcheck said, it’s not to expect too much, and to accept the good moments with the bad.

After Pitt, she found a landing spot with a friend who had a personal care home. Turcheck spent the next 30 years there as a manager before retiring.

“It was basically doing administrative work, keeping track of patients, medicines, things like that,” she said. “It wasn’t that different.”

Turcheck never married. It might have been nice, she said, but she isn’t sad about it.

“I think I would have done well as a wife and a mother, but I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve lived a very full life.”

She gets to visit with family, from a cousin who works as a doctor in eastern Pennsylvania to younger relatives in Indiana she sees yearly.

And she has a full slate of hobbies, including cooking, baking, gardening, watching TV and knitting. Though she doesn’t do it much anymore, she was “a rather vociferous knitter,” relishing the challenge of tougher jobs like Irish fisherman knit sweaters.

“I’m very much a perfectionist,” she said. “When I attack a pattern or something like that, if I make one little mistake and I see it, I rip it all down to the mistake, correct the mistake and knit again.”

And she fondly recalls the traveling, which allowed her to see the boats on the canals in Amsterdam, the Liszt Garden, and the Chateau de Versailles.

She’d explore new areas on each trip, reading in advance about the sights to find new destinations.

“I broaden my horizons every time I go, try to see something different,” she said.

Locally, she remembers her trip to Albert Gallatin’s country estate at Friendship Hill, right after it became a national historic site. She also enjoyed Old Economy Village in Ambridge, which preserves the home of a 19th-century utopian religious society, complete with guides in period costumes.

“To some people, it wouldn’t seem glamorous enough,” she said. “I think that’s the problem with most people, they expect too much when they go to see something, or if they pay for it, they feel they didn’t get their money’s worth, because it’s not grandiose enough for them.”

Turcheck hasn’t stopped learning and growing. She rides the bus every day to the Masontown Senior Center, where she plays bingo, watches TV and mingles with friends.

“I don’t hardly consider myself to be 73, but after my brother passed last year, just dying suddenly at age 65, it makes you conscious of the fact that you’re not going to be here forever,” she said. “But as far as I’m concerned, as long as I’m able to come to senior center, I want to come. I enjoy it.”

The camaraderie is important. And Turcheck also enjoys the variety of guest speakers who come in, whether a pharmacist, a nutritionist at the Uniontown Senior Center who brings menu ideas, or a retired kindergarten teacher who brings bags of treats that Turcheck saves for the grandson of her domiciliary care provider.

“I don’t think there’s any age limit on your ability to learn something new every day,” she said. “Something new doesn’t surprise you. You roll with the punches, you take it into consideration as part of your repertoire, and you learn and you live with it.”