Dear friends,

Our wonderful, beautiful, talented, and compassionate mother, Elaine Goldstein, has passed away. Mom died on October 13, 2022, after a long struggle with dementia. She was 95 years old.

While Mom was beautiful in every way, it was her empathy and caring that made her truly remarkable; if ever there was an empath, it was Mom. And on top of that she was also an accomplished ballerina, painter, potter, sculptor, photographer, and gardener. She was one of a kind and will be deeply, deeply missed by her daughter Marcy, her son-in-law Mike, her granddaughter Sara, her son Alan, her daughter-in-law Molan, and so many others whose lives she touched.

Mom was born on January 13, 1927, the daughter of Harry and Minnie Satz, the younger sister of Leonard. She grew up in Philadelphia and attended Overbrook High School (11 years ahead of another noted Overbrook alum, Wilt Chamberlain). She was president of the dancing club and hoped one day to be Vogue’s chief illustrator (she would have been great!).

As noted in her 1944 Overbrook yearbook caption, she put her drawing skills to good use at a Stage Door Canteen in order to help entertain solders on leave during World War II. One of those soldiers was my father Walter, who wandered in one night on weekend leave from the Coast Guard.  As an aspiring artist himself, Dad was impressed by Mom’s sketches. They formed an immediate connection.  Dad was so taken with Mom that he asked if he could see her the next day. Then Dad, normally not one to act on impulse, stunningly (to not only Mom but much later to both his future children and everyone we ever told the story to) proposed to Mom that very next day—one day after they first met! She turned him down then but accepted a year later. After initially living in Brooklyn, they moved to Wantagh, where they lived in the same house on Morgan Drive for 66 years. They remained married for almost 72 years.

Mom was relentlessly creative and excelled in nearly everything she did. As the prima ballerina in a small dance company, Mom danced the lead in Swan Lake and other ballets. She became an accomplished wedding photographer, learning her craft from renowned photographer Arthur Leipzig, and served as the yearbook photographer for Uniondale High School, where Dad was yearbook advisor, for many years. She was a skilled sculptor and potter, and she painted and drew pastels as well. And Mom was an avid gardener and landscape designer, yet another outlet for her artistic muse.

Mom was always there for Dad, always there for us, and always there for her friends, coworkers, and neighbors. She was very loving and very supportive. She even drove me to New York Nets ABA basketball games—first in Hempstead and then in Uniondale—and picked me up after the games, for which I shall be forever grateful. What a wonderful and beautiful person she was in every way. We are so lucky to have been graced with her presence in our lives.

Julia Grant, the wife of President Ulysses S. Grant, wrote a beautiful passage about her husband after his death. It applies quite well, in slightly modified form, to my mom:

“For over 95 years we were bathed in the sunlight of her love and now, even though her beautiful life has gone out, it is as when some far-off planet disappears from the heavens; the light from her glorious aura still reaches to us, falls upon us, and warms us.”

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