Carolynn Pinsler Licht (1930-2023)
by Norman G. Licht September 2023
Carolynn was a proud native of San Franciscan. She grew up in her home in the Richmond district on 32nd Ave across from the front door to Washington High School, from which she graduated. She went to Lafayette Elementary School and Presidio Junior High.
She often talked about her fond memories of her happy childhood. From her home, she walked to the library and walked to the Legion of Honor Museum, where she saw old movies including Charlie Chaplin films. She ended her walks with a climb up a steep street from Geary.
On Saturdays she went to matinees at the Balboa Theatre, a short walk from the family home. There was one movie, or a double feature, plus cartoons and weekly short serials, at a cost of ten cents. One day the manager dressed in a tuxedo, went on the stage and announced the next week the cost would increase one cent to eleven cents, so bring more money.
She went with her grandmother or mother to the Jewish shopping district at Fillmore and McAllister. She recalled going to Gedalya’s butcher shop, where the customer selected a chicken from a cage or running around the grounds, and then it was killed and plucked for the buyer. There were fish stores and bakeries in the district.
Carolynn’s father would often drive the family to a nearby store for ice cream cones and chocolate-covered banans. The family would often go out to dinner at a favorite restaurant, Alioto’s at Fisherman’s Wharf.
Her family went to services at Beth Israel Synagogue near Fillmore Street. Carolynn completed Confirmation. Girls at that time did not have Bat Mitzvahs and did not go onto the Bima. She did not learn to read Hebrew until much later, taught by Ruth Shapiro at Beth Jacob in Redwood City. Later conservative Beth Israel combined with reformed Temple Judea. Still later the Beth Israel building was destroyed by fire.
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Carolynn was age 11. There was a Japanese American family living behind them, back yards adjoining, and the neighbor had a beautiful garden. One day they disappeared, and soon after their garden died. They had been deported to a detention camp.
In the summertime, to get away from the fog to sunshine, the family rented a small home in the small town of Los Gatos. It was located in what is now downtown. Carolynn and her sisters didn’t have much to do there, except for picking fruit at one of the many fruit orchards. The owner of the home wanted to sell the home to Carolynn’s parents, for a few thousand dollars. When they declined, he offered to include the piano, but they were still not interested.
Carolynn’s parents, Jack and Serena Pinsler, and Norm’s parents, Mayer and Sarah Licht were friends. One of their friends hosted a house party for all their children, which is where Carolynn at age 14, and I at age 17 first met. We dated for 6 years. (There are details about our dating and my Army service on our website - see American Descendants, Norman and Carolynn Licht)
I was drafted into the Army on September 6, 1947, after World War II ended, and was sent to Camp Lee, Virginia for basic training and band training as a Clarinetist. Carolynn sent me care packages, including candied dates which she prepared. We wrote many letters to each other. I was at Camp Stoneman, CA, waiting to be deployed to Japan as a band member. I was on Kitchen Police duty when they told me I was to be honorably discharged after 6 months because the government was demobilizing. I was discharged in February 1948.
Carolynn went to Cal for one year. We were married on September 3, 1950, by Rabbis Saul White of Beth Sholom, and Elliot Berstine of Beth Israel. We were married for 72 years. Carolynn’s life was embodied by a passage in the bible where Ruth said “Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”
We first rented a small apartment on Guerrero Street in the Mission district of San Francisco. It was close to Lachman’s Furniture store, at 16th and Mission streets, where Carolynn worked in the office while I was in my final year in Optometry School. The Optometry students gave her a certificate for Ph.T.: “putting husband through school”.
I enlisted in the US Air Force, as an optometry officer, to avoid being drafted for the second time. His service was 1952 – 1955. First Carolynn went with me to Montgomery, Alabama, where I attended the School of Aviation Medicine. We were shocked by the segregation there: separate bathrooms for Colored, separate seating at lunch counters, seating in the back of the bus, etc.
I was then stationed at Mather Air Force Base near Sacramento, where we lived in a small house on a hill at the base. It was hot, coming from the fog in San Francisco, we went to the movie on base often which was one of the few places that were air conditioned. Our son Ron was born at the base hospital, delivered by Dr. Paul Rosen. He and his wife Shirley became lifelong friends after the service. There was a lot of happy partying at the officers’ club and many new friends. The Daus, from the Midwest, moved from Mather AFB to Atherton and continued their friendship with us.
Next, we rented a duplex near downtown San Mateo, close to my new office. Then we bought our first house in the Fiesta Gardens subdivision in San Mateo. A few years later we moved to a home on Hewitt Drive in San Carlos, where we lived for 60 years until we moved to Moldaw Residences at the JCC in south Palo Alto in November 2021.
During our time in San Carlos, Carolynn liked jewelry, dining, dancing, reading novels, cooking entertaining, sewing, needlepoint, knitting, movies, listening to music, watching Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune, doing cross-word puzzles, and regularly playing Mah Jong. At Chanuka she liked playing Dreidel with her grandchildren at the dining room table. She took piano lessons as a child, then stopped, but it gave her a lifetime appreciation of music. She didn’t like to sing, but she loved to listen to music.
Before we had children, we enjoyed dancing to traditional jazz and swing. One of our favorite places to go was Hambone Kelly’s in El Cerrito when I was at Cal, and later at Turk Murphy’s in San Francisco. We went to concerts by the Preservation Hall Dance Band, first in New Orleans, and then annually at the Marin County Fair. We enjoyed the SF Symphony, first at the Rehearsals, which were early in the morning and started with delicious coffee and donuts. Later we went to regular performances at Symphony Hall in S.F, and often had unplanned meetings of old friends.
Carolynn did not know much about cooking when we were first married, but she quickly learned, and became a very good cook. She learned from Julia Child on TV. She had a vast collection of cookbooks and separate recipes. Carolynn and I often entertained friends in their home, usually on Saturday night, when she made unusual recipes different than their usual meals. We had a potluck group with 6 other couples: the Srauses, Boyds, and Cohns. Wd rotated hosts and homes, the hostess made the main course, and the other couples brought other courses. This group stayed together for many years.
We were original members of Reim Havurah and the Movie Mavens movie group.
Carolynn did not eat raw onions and her favorite food was chocolate.
She was the receptionist in my optometry office in San Mateo, where she also handled eyeglass frame selection for patients. She was called Carolynn in the office. We didn’t tell patients we were married, but patients often guessed it. We worked together in perfect harmony.
In 2012 she received an award to commemorate 10 years of tutoring elementary school students who needed help with reading. At Congregation Beth Jacob she was a member of these committees: education, library, and Israel action.
She said she was the last person to be selected for teams in High School, but gladly went to Cal basketball and football games when Norm was a student, but had little interest in sports later on. She didn’t care about baseball but liked going to see her grandsons play in their many baseball games. She didn’t like animals but liked to go to the S F Zoo with her grandchildren.
She loved little children, and always stopped to smile and say a few words to a child when she saw one.
Carolynn and I traveled all over the world, to many countries. Our favorite was Israel, beginning with our first visit in 1975 when they had not yet rebuilt the devastation by Jordan during the 6-day war in 1968. We visited Israel five times and were on the first group tour from Beth Jacob.
When in Greece in the heat of summer Carolynn bought a full-length silver mink coat, which she only wore a few times before the conservationists objected to animal furs. When in Japan Mount Fuji was hidden by a dense fog, until the fog lifted for about five minutes and we saw the top of the mountain. Our visits to Japan and China inspired my Asian garden and the Asian décor and art at our home in San Carlos. We also traveled to many cities in the US; In June for the American Optometric Association, December for the American Academy of Optometry, and California Optometric Association meetings in many CA cities, especially Fresno, Los Angeles, and San Diego.
I was a president, committee chairman, board member, or active member of many organizations: Optometry, B’nai B’rith, Beth Jacob in Redwood City, CAMERA for his letters to the editor supporting Israel, Lions International, and the JNF. I got the credit and recognition, but Carolynn was my advisor and silent partner in everything that I accomplished.
Carolynn had a good life, until in 2019 our daughter Diane suddenly died after one week of complications from the flu, with symptoms much like Covid before vaccines. Diane had never been married. We saw Diane often, especially at Jewish holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, and at a variety of local museums, and musical performances. She traveled with us to Mexico, Israel, Sicily, and the Spanish Riviera. Her unexpected death suddenly changed our plans. The very fitting Yiddish saying is “Man plans and God laughs”.
Carolynn was healthy until 2018 when she was diagnosed with lymphoma, her first cancer. Chemo and radiation treatments were initially successful but left her with a mild loss of short-term memory. Her second cancer was found in a lung in December 2022 and was the cause of her death at 92. She lived 5½ months after the diagnosis and passed away peacefully in her sleep at the end of May 2023.
Carolynn was the caretaker for me for 68 years, and I was the caretaker for her for the last 5 years. She said to me on occasion: “You can take care of me for the next 70 years”.
She liked to watch movies all her life, new films in the theatre, and old films on TV. During the pandemic, we watched a lot of TV, movies on Netflix, and lots of news. She said to Norm “We need to get a new TV set, our set has so much bad news”.
She participated in an aerobics exercise class in San Carlos weekly for years. When she fell leaving the class and broke her hip, she had hip repair surgery and did well recovering from surgery, aided by her body strength from the previous exercise. When at Moldaw we walked together, sometimes at the outdoor 1/8-mile track, and sometimes indoors on the 2nd floor, because she was always particular about the kind of weather she liked.
She accepted her illnesses, and her loss of short-term memory from chemotherapy, but the latter saddened me. She didn’t complain, until near the end of her final illness when she continued to get weaker. Her daughter Diane witnessed the treatment for her first cancer, she said Carolynn was a gracious lady when healthy, and a gracious lady when ill. Carolynn’s long-time hairdresser said she is a sweetheart.
She was a good patient, and always followed exactly the advice of her doctors, nurses, and caretakers. She was very appreciative of the help from her regular and specialist doctors and their nurses and from the nurses and caretakers at Moldaw, especially Regina the hospice nurse for 5 1/2 months.
I am thankful that she was with me at the Moldaw. She helped with the move from our home of 60 years, got to see the décor of our apartment, and got to experience life at Moldaw. We went to dinner in the dining room for the first year at Moldaw, except for one month lockdown for Covid, and one ten-day lockdown when we contracted Covid and had mild symptoms. She appreciated that the residents at Moldaw were friendly. She often said, “I’m glad the food is as good as it is, so we don’t have to go out to dinner”. Service in the dining room was slow, so there was a lot of conversation and visits with old friends and new friends who got to know her.
Carolynn was kind, considerate, friendly, and polite. She smiled a lot. She was tall and slender. She dressed fashionably and modestly. She had “Class”. In the difficult last 5 years of her life, she had an increased sense of humor and irony - friends said she was a funny lady.
Carolynn is survived by her 3 sisters: Miriam Suslow, Roberta Cohn, and Lorraine Marshall. She had 14 nieces and nephews. She recalled her father took a lot of kidding about having 4 daughters and no son. She was pre-deceased by her three brothers-in-law: Robert Suslow, Leonard Cohn, and Leonard Marshall, and by her daughter Diane.
Carolynn is survived by her beloved family: husband Norman, son Ron, and his wife Cathy, and by her grandchildren: Daniel; Andrew and wife Adna; and Hana and spouse Mik Lyles and their infant son Rui.