Tuesday, November 17, 2020
Carol's mother and my mother were sisters who were about ten years apart in age, my mother the younger. As cousins, Carol and I were also ten years apart in age, and I have always looked up to her as a kind of "big sister" - even now at age 52. Carol always had great powers of observation and saw the latent humor in life's situations. She also had a creative zing, which was expressed in her astute skills as a realtor and also in her personal style. She made fashionable dress and elegant home decor look easy - I remember my first visit to her new home on Long Island with Jim in 1983, shortly after their marriage, and noticing that she had somehow found pink kitchen appliances - which at that time were very quirky and unique. Carol would show up to family gatherings wearing something unusual that always looked perfectly eye-catching and snazzy on her. And her spunky, witty take on everything from family to food, personalities to politics, real estate to relatives made our wonderfully long phone conversations a highlight of my life over the past seventeen years since I moved away from New York. She was a one-in-a-million kind of person / cousin / friend who was always fully "there" - always an active listener, always a passionately engaged ally when times were good or bad, and generous with her time and love no matter what. She gave freely of her kindness and attention and always made me feel deeply loved. So many great memories of our family in Syracuse and Rochester - grandparents, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews - pass along out of this world with her. I will never forget her many gestures of kindness and love, and the comforting sound of her words - in person or on the phone. She was truly a fighter who loved with her whole heart, sometimes in a loud voice, but always in full technicolor effort, even when her health and the pandemic forced limits on her ambition. May her great big, strong soul live on in all of us who loved her dearly.
-Wendy Dorn, Brookfield Wisconsin
