Judy Moran Sadowski

Michael Light Chernoff

1945 - 2022

MICHAEL CHERNOFF OBITUARY

Amherst, MA — Michael Light Chernoff died on June 14, 2022 at home, with his beloved wife and daughters at his side. The cause of death, as explained by Michael's three-year-old grandson Isaiah, is that "his heart got old and stopped working." The workings of Michael's joyful and generous heart had been impaired by the recurrence of incurable liver cancer. Michael met this diagnosis, and his death, with courage, acceptance, and an indomitable sense of humor.

Michael was 77 years old, and by his own account, had "lived a charmed life." He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on January 25, 1945 to Harold and Florence Chernoff and had a happy childhood with his younger brother, John Chernoff. The family spent the summers in Beach Haven, New Jersey and Michael always carried with him the happy memories of those long summer days, the sound of his parents and their friends speaking Yiddish and drinking cocktails in the evening on the beach, the feeling of taking a nap in the sun after swimming in the ocean.

Michael attended Shadyside Academy in Pittsburgh and then Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois where he earned a degree in Sociology. On May 21st of his junior year he went on a blind date with a girl named Jaymie Wolcott. Michael went to pick up Jaymie at her dorm and when she walked down the stairs to meet him it was, as he explained later, "game over." He fell in love instantly, and – as anyone who ever met him knows – he stayed madly in love with her all of his life.

Michael and Jaymie loved their adventures together, beginning with their one-way tickets to Greece in 1971, two years after they were married. They lived and worked in Athens, and then on the small island of Syros. They continued to travel over the years while they shared the everyday adventure of working, raising their two girls, Nina and Bryn, and being a part of the Amherst community. In retirement they embarked on a new adventure together, studying Spanish and eventually buying a home in Queretaro, Mexico where they lived for part of each year. Michael was passionate about Mexico and called his time there a "complement to his soul." The adventure, the novelty, and the freshness were invigorating to him. He loved the warm and patient culture of the Queretanos, the concerts on every corner, and "Numero 73," their beautiful home filled with flowers and hummingbirds.

Michael's professional life was shaped by his intellectual curiosity and his determination to be a good provider. He earned a master's degree in Sociology at the University of Chicago, and a PhD in Sociology at UMass Amherst. He started his career as an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Georgia State University, but found he was drawn more to real-world projects and New England. He left academia and joined the marketing team at National Evaluation Systems in Amherst. At the time of his retirement in 2010, he was a development officer for the UMass Engineering College where he was fascinated by the engineering projects and broke office records in outreach and fundraising.

What Michael brought to every job was an intense work ethic and irreverent sense of humor. He had treasured colleagues over the years, many of whom became dear friends, who joined him both in his philosophy that "everything worth doing is worth doing well" as well as a variety of hijinks. For all his professional success, he would say that his best job had been on the garbage truck in his high school summers in Beach Haven; he loved the early morning camaraderie, stopping at the Coast Guard station for donuts and coffee, and finishing in time for an afternoon at the beach.

Michael has been an active member of the Amherst community for over forty years. He spent a few lively years as a member of the Amherst School Committee; he was a volunteer tutor and Board Member of the Amherst Literacy Project; and most recently was fundraising for The Jones Library. He was a former Board member of the Jewish Community of Amherst, a writer of sharp and thoughtful letters to the editor of the Gazette, and a stalwart fan of American Legion games at the high school field.

Michael loved his circle of long-time friends in Amherst, his new friendships in Mexico, being a part of the Jewish community, having meaningful conversations, his Spanish lessons, physics, his daily volunteer role managing finances for his daughter Bryn's business, astronomy, loud music, reading, coffee, working out, checking things off lists, drag racing, a good nap (he always recommended the "luge" position for napping), and especially his Pittsburgh Steelers. He often expressed his affection by heckling and was always cracking jokes, but he was serious about love. He loved his wife and daughters with a force and depth that made their lives rich and safe and joyful; a love that will sustain them in the days to come.

Michael's surviving family members include his wife of more than 53 years, Jaymie Chernoff; their daughter Nina Chernoff and her partner Mark Sylvester; their daughter Bryn Chernoff and her husband Tim Yu, and their children, Simone and Isaiah; his brother John Chernoff and John's wife Donna Chernoff; his sisters-in-law Jill Wolcott, Janine Wolcott, Joan Wolcott and her husband Craig Elliott, Jennifer Wolcott and her husband Bernard Cabrera, and his beloved nieces and nephews, Eunice, Eva, Harlan, Avram, Jemma, Sergei, Cate, Oliver, Owen, Alex, Nat, and Nick. Michael is predeceased by his beloved parents, as well as his dear cousins Harvey and Lenore Light.

A memorial service will be held at 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday, June 21st at the Jewish Community Center of Amherst. All who knew and cared for Michael are welcome. The family will be sitting shiva at their home at 97 Gray Street from 7 to 9 p.m. on June 21st, 22nd, and 23rd. (Shiva is an opportunity for anyone reading this to come by and call on the family to offer condolences and support; you do not need to be Jewish to attend.) Memorial guestbook at www.douglassfuneral.com

In Memory of

Marianne 
Bianco (Ortoleva)

1953 - 2019

Obituary for Marianne Bianco (Ortoleva)

Age 65, of Plum Boro., on Tuesday, July 30, 2019. Beloved wife of Moe Bianco Jr., loving mother of Moe (Mandy) Bianco III and Lindsay Nicole Bianco; adored grandmother of Gianna, Brooklyn, Eli, Maddox and Dallas; sister of Donna (Rich) Irlbacher and Gina (Rick) Schmidt; daughter of the late Peter J. and Eileen Ortoleva; sister-in-law of Francine (Tony) Liscotti and Debbie (the late Steve) Gyke; also survived by numerous nieces and nephews. Marianne was a selfless person who never asked for anything, instead caring always about others. She was beautiful inside and out with a delightful sense of humor. After working at Sears for 15 years, she dedicated her life to providing a beautiful home for her husband and children. After they had grown, she returned to work at Shop N' Save and then to Forbes Regional Hospital billing office. When she was blessed with grandchildren, she loved her role as grandma. Arrangements entrusted to Soxman Funeral Homes, Ltd.

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Obituary: Sister Donna Marie Beck / Pioneering music therapist

April 30, 1932 -- June 12, 2019

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

JUN 13, 2019

7:47 PM

Once, when Donna Marie Beck was a young girl, she was in the middle of a piano lesson when her teacher, a nun, accidentally knocked the sheet music off its stand while Ms. Beck was playing. The book fell to the floor. But the girl kept on playing.

“The nun said, ‘How did you do that?” recalled Ms. Beck’s sister, Carolyn Nickerson. “And she said, ‘I don’t know!’”

It was an early sign of what was to come for Sister Donna Marie, who died Wednesday in Baden, the home of the Sisters of St. Joseph motherhouse, at the age of 87. Over time, she became not only a prodigiously talented organist and pianist, but also a beloved music teacher and pioneer in the field of music therapy, helping to popularize it in the area. All the while, she maintained a profound connection between her faith and her love of music, which she called her “servant source.”

Sister Donna Marie was born the third of nine children in Gallitzin, Cambria County, to a Catholic family that prized music as a virtue all its own. She entered the convent and became a nun in 1949, and started teaching music in the Diocese of Pittsburgh schools. As a teacher, Sister Donna Marie demanded the most out of her students. In recent remembrances on Facebook, some former students at Monongahela Valley Catholic High School recalled her threatening to “jump down your throat and dance on your liver” if they did not pay close attention.

At the same time, Sister Donna Marie showed them deep compassion. A lover of Broadway shows, she was put in charge of auditions for the school’s plays, but found herself unable to reject any of the students who tried out.

“She had such a soft heart and held such confidence that there was something everybody had to offer — she couldn’t sort among them,” said Ms. Nickerson of Cresson, Cambria County.

Sister Donna Marie eventually became drawn to the burgeoning field of music therapy, becoming one of the first students to earn a certification from Duquesne University’s music therapy program in 1976. She earned her Ph.D. from Duquesne, writing her doctoral thesis on the links between music and existential phenomenology: the way our subjective experience reflects our own personal values and relationships.

Sister Donna Marie practiced music therapy with patients who were autistic, with children who had been abandoned by their families, with adults suffering from severe anxiety or depression. She even worked with comatose patients, researching what kind of music the person had enjoyed while conscious.

This personalized approach saw results. Linda Sanders, a friend and colleague, remembered an instance where Sister Donna Marie visited a patient who had been considered unresponsive, bringing along a stringed instrument called an autoharp. Sister began to play at the woman’s bedside.

“The patient turns her body and reaches towards the autoharp,” Ms. Sanders recalled. “That told Sister Donna that she could hear — she just had a hard time responding.”

While she was not working directly with patients, Sister Donna Marie was working to institutionalize music therapy as a discipline. Her scholarship on the theory of music therapy was published widely, and she established programs at Marywood College in Scranton, Pa., various elder care homes and at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. She taught for decades at Duquesne, where she served as director of the music therapy department.

“In that role she encountered so many students coming through, but had a way of knowing you individually and uniquely,” said Brigette Sutton, a student of Sister Donna Marie’s at Duquesne who now works as a music therapist.

The kind of music therapy that Sister Donna Marie taught her students was intertwined with spirituality. “She would say that dissonance is a call to transcendence,” Ms. Sutton said. “Those moments of tension in life are actually the moments that call you forward to become something more.”

Facing moments of dissonance in her own life, Sister Donna Marie returned to that same approach. As her own mother neared the end of her life, Sister Donna Marie read up on music thanatology: the science of death. She visited her mother and played recordings of “celestial harp music,” Ms. Nickerson recalled.

“She would talk softly and quietly and reassure my mother that she was loved, that it would be OK, everything would work out,” Ms. Nickerson said. “She was evoking the disposition that you need to take with you to die well.”

Sister Donna Marie retired from Duquesne in 2008, continuing to work part-time as a professor emerita. She remained mentally and musically sharp until her death, though she was physically slowed by complications of diabetes.

Shortly before her death, Ms. Nickerson said, several of Sister Donna Marie’s relatives — gifted musicians themselves — visited her at her home in the Sisters of St Joseph congregation in Baden. Her sister Maureen Beck of Baltimore and a nephew played guitar, while a niece played ukulele. They sang, and Sister Donna Marie, though she’d grown weak, sang along.

“We did a little therapy for her,” Ms. Nickerson said.

Friends will be received Sunday from 1 p.m. to the close of the 6 p.m. prayer vigil and Monday from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. before the funeral Mass, at the motherhouse of the Sisters of St. Joseph, 1020 State St., Baden. Donations in her memory may be sent to the Sisters of St. Joseph Memorial Fund, Development Office, at the motherhouse, Baden, Pa. 15005.

QUINN SANDRA MOORE

Age 62, on Sat., July 18, 2015.  Beloved wife of Anthony Quinn; loving mother of Karen MOORE Russell.  Visitation with family at D’ALESSANDRO FUNERAL HOME AND CREMATORY, LTD., Butler and 46^th Sts., Lawrenceville, on Wednesday from 6 p.m. until the time of Service at 7:30 p.m.