Carole Wolfe Abel passed suddenly on November 22, 2021, at age 88.

She was brought to this world, specifically The Bronx, in 1933—at the height of the Depression—by her overjoyed parents, Mollie and Alfred Wolfe. Her childhood featured the challenge of growing up with as many as seven of her extended family members crammed into a modest apartment with a single bathroom. These included her sister Marlene and brothers Melvin and Arnold (Arnie’s pompadour hairstyle allegedly monopolized much of the precious bathroom time.)

Carole developed a genuine desire to help people, and this manifested itself in a Hunter College degree in social work. She spent some time afterwards employed in that field, but soon found herself working at RCA Records, where she spoke of meeting Elvis Presley, who failed to impress Carole due to her allegiance to jazz. After several years of being passed up for promotions given to men instead, she fired off a blistering letter of resignation calling out her boss for sexism.

In the mid-50's she met her future husband Bob Abel at a party, and before long they were shacked up together in a tiny apartment in Greenwich Village, in a sort of premarital, beatnicky bliss. Carole hid her radical-at-the-time lifestyle from her parents by using a girlfriend’s phone number to deceive them into thinking she had a female roommate.

After about 3 years of this ruse, Carole and Bob decided to go legit and get married, in 1959. (The venue was a typical New York City space-saver, functioning as a synagogue on Saturdays and then the altar rotated to become a church on Sundays.)

Against Bob’s desperate desire to stay south of 14th Street in the Village, but needing more space to potentially raise kids, the newlyweds headed north to the dingy, crime-and-drug filled Upper West Side of Manhattan, eventually landing at 160 West 87th in 1962 (where she would remain almost 60 years). They were relieved to discover the building and the neighborhood were also full of artists, musicians, writers and teachers, and they felt right at home. Both Carole and Bob made many, many new friends—friendships that continue to this day.

The couple had trouble getting pregnant, and when they finally did there were complications. The tricky C-section births of Douglas in '67 and David in '69 were overseen by identical twin doctors Stewart and Cyril Marcus, who subsequently had a rather dramatic demise (as portrayed by Jeremy Irons in the film Dead Ringers). Carole and Bob being true progressives in favor of civil rights, Douglas William Abel was named after Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, and David Warren Abel after Chief Justice Earl Warren.

As Bob navigated the post-Mad Men era of publishing, Carole largely raised the kids and was an active participant in improving the quality of the local public elementary school P.S. 166. Her Japanese sukiyaki cooking demonstration may be the reason electric frying pans are now banned from classrooms there.

In the mid-1970’s she embarked on a freelance career as a literary agent, and represented a wide variety of authors of cookbooks, how-to’s, self help, and the occasional novel. With a last name starting with the letter “A,” every lunatic with a life story and a directory of agents darkened her mailbox. Carole was tough but fair with her many rejection letters.

In the late 70’s Bob tragically developed lymphoma, and died in 1981 at only 50 years old. Carole was faced with crippling debt and raising two teenage sons on her own. But she wasn’t on her own–family members and the large network of wonderful friends and helped her over this hump, and after a while she not only recovered but thrived professionally.

Carole met Walter Krause in the early 90’s and they became good friends and loving partners, taking many adventurous trips and indulging each other’s quirks until, after 25 years together, he developed some health issues and mild dementia that left Walt mostly homebound and Carole as caregiver again.  In the Fall of 2019 Walt's needs were more than Carole could physically manage, even with the excellent home health aides, so a family decision was made to move him into a full-time care facility. In February 2020, just as Covid was starting to spread, he passed.

In her last few years, Carole suffered from bad arthritis in her knees and was mostly blind in one eye, affecting her depth perception, but was otherwise healthy. While she required using a walker to maintain her balance on the bumpy streets, she could travel many blocks at a good clip and took pride in being self-sufficient, taking care of all her needs on her own... unless a computer or cellphone was involved, and then she required much hand-holding.

Carole continued to love tennis, jazz, theater, her friends, and the entire universe that could be contained in the small island of Manhattan. After 60 plus years there, she represented a creative and intellectual element of the Upper West Side that with her passing will become something to be enshrined in memory. She will be deeply missed.  

Carole is survived by her sons David and Douglas, sister Marlene, sister-in-law Lannon, grandson Oscar, daughters-in-law Christina and Jenny, nieces Erika, Kirsten, Beth and Jessica, and nephews Steven and Timothy.

Send to someone

Share this obituary with others

https://everloved.com/life-of/carole-abel/obituary/

Copy