By Gretchen Keiser

In a 1968 interview, Leo J. Zuber said that the Catholic Church suffers to a degree because lay members of the Church have not been active participants. He must have made the same observation privately, years before talk of the laity’s role was common, and it fueled a lifetime of public and private service.

Mr. Zuber, 72, died Nov 17 of a heart attack. A retired director of Community Planning and Management of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, he had spent 30 years in civil service and received the Distinguished Service Award in 1977. Early in his career, his work brought him from Harbor Springs, Mich. to Tennessee, where as a geographer he mapped the Tennessee Valley for the Tennessee Valley Authority.

“He turned out to be a Southerner,” his wife, the former Blanche Roberts, said. “He loved the South,” His work as a Catholic layman began there where he worked for the Catholic Committee of the South, a lay organization trying to foster understanding of Catholicism in a region where the numbers of Catholics were few.

Married in 1939, the Zubers moved to their home on North Decatur Road when the street was a dirt road and there was a cornfield behind the house. Parents of six children, they became members of St. Thomas More parish where Father Walter Donovan, pastor, said Mr. Zuber held every position over the years that a parish has.

A parish council president, he organized a parish leadership training program in 1968 with the cooperation of the late Monsignor Patrick J. O’Connor, then pastor. A series of weekend study groups at the Trappist monastery and ecumenical get-togethers with non-Catholic friends were outgrowths of “Operation Understanding.”

In work for the archdiocese, which included membership on the board of the Development and Religious Unity Commission, he was one of 37 members of the lay congress for the archdiocesan synod in 1966.

And for 13 years from 1949 to the early 1960s, he wrote book reviews and then edited a page of book reviews for the Georgia Catholic newspaper, then known as The Bulletin. The book page in the biweekly paper drew on the talents of about 25 volunteer reviewers, and a methodical system Mr. Zuber organized to obtain review copies, distribute them, and correspond with publishers.

The page, including full reviews and thumbnail reviews of books, generally covered 12 to 15 books a month, appealing to all age groups. “He produced an outstanding page, something which you would not expect to find in a small biweekly paper – and he did it all gratis,” said John Markwalter, editor of The Southern Cross. “He just amazed me. It was high caliber and all donated. It was a pure labor of love.”

At the time of his death, Mr. Zuber was at work on a book gathering reviews written for The Bulletin during those years by Flannery O’Connor, the most famous of those to write for the book page.

In the interview after his tenure as book page editor he said, “Our life span isn’t so great. It is important that we, as alive, alert, and hopefully intelligent laymen can leave a heritage our children can build on later. Our children will be building the spires. We are trying to dig the foundations or shore them up. We should be proud to be here, and in the years to come, be proud to say that we were there, hopefully helping.”

Mr. Zuber was the first male volunteer for Birthright, Inc., when it was the only pregnancy service in the southeast and served as treasurer for eight years. He was also an active member of the Georgia Partners of the Americas.

A Navy veteran of World War II, Mr. Zuber was a graduate of Wayne University and earned his Master’s degree at the University of Michigan. He did further studies at Clark University. He had also worked at the National Housing Agency and the Metropolitan Planning Commission and taught at Georgia State University, Georgia Institute of Technology and Marist College. He was an author and co-author of many articles on city planning.

“He served every possible constituency in which he found himself and he did it well,” said Father Donovan. “His whole life was service.”

In addition to his wife, he is survived by his children, Mrs. Patricia Foskett of Woodstock, Mrs. Mary Estrada of Pomono, Calif., Leo Jr. of Atlanta, Thomas of Cary, N.C., Peter of Provo, Utah and Paul of Longmont, Colo., and by five grandchildren