Bernard Goldstein

Bernard Goldstein, longtime Princeton resident, passed away Saturday, November 12, 2016 of pneumonia at Retreat Hospital in Richmond, Virginia, age 89.

He was born on September 22, 1927 in Brooklyn, New York to Eli and Esther Goldstein. Eli was in the Russian army where there was a saying, “sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.”

Growing up, Bernard Goldstein was called Bobby or Bobbenyu, and graduated from Erasmus Hall High School, Brooklyn College and Brooklyn Polytechnic with a PhD in physics.

In the Navy, which he loved because he got away from home and got five meals a day, he climbed the tower on an aircraft carrier to repair the radar when it malfunctioned, had lunch leaning against the Rock of Gibraltar, and dated the actress Honor Blackman from The Avengers on television and the James Bond film, Goldfinger.

He moved to Princeton in the early 1950s and began to work for RCA Labs at the corner of Harrison Street and U.S. Route 1. One night he went to a party at his friend Sonya Loafner’s house and met his future wife, Sonya Bendett, a recent Smith College graduate who was teaching French at Valley Road Middle School. The two of them had a strong, immediate mutual attraction and soon moved in with each other on Dorann Avenue. They were married April 21, 1955.

At RCA, Bernard Goldstein, called “Bernie,” by his colleagues, who included Paul Rappaport, Werner Torch, Charlotte Dobin, and Greg Olson, received several outstanding achievement awards, obtained a patent and wrote an article about Lead Auger and Gallium Arsenide that received many reprint requests from all over the world, including Novosibirsk, Siberia.

Bernie’s specialties at RCA were solar cells, crystals, and a vacuum chamber. From September of 1968 to June of 1969, at a time when it was fashionable for East Coast scientists to go abroad to spread the knowledge, he did physics in Paris at the Faculté des Sciences under Pierre Baruche, then went back to RCA. During this sabbatical, he and his family traveled all over France, and his children attended the Parc Monceau branch of the new Ecole Active Bilingue School run by Madame Cohen. There, his son Peter befriended classmates Timothy and Maria Shriver, and their mother Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the sister of JFK who founded the Special Olympics organization in honor of her lobotomized sister.

After retiring and living for a year in London and five years in Redwood City, California, Bernie and his wife Sonya moved to Glen Allen, Virginia, a suburb of Richmond around the turn of the century to be near their grandchildren.

His wife, Sonya, of 57 years, passed away on December 7, 2012. Bernard Goldstein is survived by his children Peter and Laurie, and his grandchildren Zachary and Matthew. His son Peter lived with him for the last 3 years of his life.

Bernie enjoyed exercise, tennis, football, bridge, reading, gardening, and had 3 mystery novels published under the name Bernard Peterson (The Peripheral Spy, The Marseilles Connection, and The Caravaggio Books, about murder in the basement of the main library at a prestigious East Coast university).

A memorial service will be held Sunday, December 11, 2016 at 3 p.m. at The Jewish Center, 435 Nassau Street, Princeton, NJ 08540. All are welcome.

———

Julia T. Marcoline

Julia T. Marcoline, 93, passed away on Saturday, November 26, 2016, at Atrium Post Acute Care of Princeton in Plainsboro after a brief illness. She was born on Humbert Street in Princeton on February 12, 1923 and was a lifelong resident.

A 1940 graduate of Princeton High School, she continued her education at St. Francis School of Nursing in Trenton, and became a Registered Nurse (RN). For 50 years she worked as an RN in both a dental practice and in healthcare at area hospitals. Prior to retiring, she was working both as a private duty nurse and home visiting nurse.

Julia was a member of the Princeton Women’s Business and Professional Group, a lifelong communicant of St. Paul Catholic Church, an avid New York sports fan; and an athlete excelling in softball, basketball, bowling and golf, which she played while a member of the Hopewell Valley Golf Club.

She will be remembered as a loving, caring, and selfless person who always thought of others before herself.

She is predeceased by her parents, Andrew and Angelina (Rossi) Marcoline, a sister Emma Marcoline Embley (Richard), and uncles John Rossi and Louis Rossi (Frances). Surviving are a nephew Richard Embley and his children Julie and John (Gina); niece Barbara Embley Brooks and children Jennifer Brooks; Jacquelyn Brooks Katzenback (Mark) and Christopher Brooks; cousins Louis Rossi, John Rossi (Anne) and Mari Daetwyler, three special great great nieces, Allison, Emily and Olivia and many special friends and wonderful Humbert Street neighbors.

Funeral services will begin at 10:15 a.m. on Friday, December 2, 2016 in the Kimble Funeral Home, 1 Hamilton Avenue, Princeton followed by a 10:45 a.m. Mass of Christian Burial at St. Paul Catholic Church, 214 Nassau Street, Princeton. Burial will be in the Princeton Cemetery.

Relatives and friends may gather at the funeral home on Thursday from 6 to 8 p.m.

Memorial contributions to St. Paul Catholic Church or SAVE, 1010 County Road 601, Skillman, NJ 08558 are appreciated.

Extend condolences and share remembrances at TheKimbleFuneralHome.com.

———

Katharine Sassé Popenoe

Katharine Sassé Popenoe died at home, surrounded by her family, on Thanksgiving Day. She was 83.

Kate was born into the family of an Episcopal minister in Newtown, Pa. on March 15, 1933. After the outbreak of World War II her father became an army chaplain and she began an itinerant life, living first with her beloved grandmother in Atlantic City, and later with her family in, among other places; Enterprise, Alabama and Paso Robles, California, before settling in Tucson, Arizona where she attended high school. Kate followed her mother and brother to Swarthmore College where she majored in psychology, graduating in 1955.

While working in Philadelphia after college Kate met David Popenoe, a Californian, whose love and partnership enriched her life until the end. Her father officiated at their marriage in 1959 at Trinity Church in Princeton. Their daughters, Becky and Julie, were born while they lived on Glenview Drive, West Windsor; they later moved to Loomis Court near the Princeton schools; and then to Moore Street where she lived until the time of her death.

Kate was a devoted mother and accomplished home-maker. She bestowed her nurturing touch not only on her own children and husband but on all who came within her orbit. With careful planning and curiosity about the world, she turned two of her husband’s sabbatical stays abroad, one in Sweden and one in England, into magical, enlightening experiences for the whole family. She was a loving and generous host mother to two Swedish exchange students, Kari and Lisa Hellermark, and throughout her life and career befriended and supported students from far-flung lands.

After receiving her masters degree in social work at Bryn Mawr College in 1958, Kate worked as a psychiatric social worker at the Child Guidance Center in Trenton before she had children. She served in many volunteer capacities including as president of the Board of the Princeton Family Service Agency in the 1970’s, and on the boards of Chapin School, Family Service Association of America, and the Princeton Area League of Women Voters. After her children were grown she returned to full-time work first as a Senior Admission Officer at Princeton University and later at The Lawrenceville School, where she spent many fulfilling years as an associate director of college counseling and, finally, as assistant headmaster, before her retirement in 1998.

Kate had an insightful intelligence; a renaissance knowledge of art, language, and literature; and was a beautiful writer. She was also a talented drawer, especially of people, and played the piano with feeling and verve up until a few months before her death. A self-taught tennis player with graceful strokes, she enjoyed the local tennis community into her late 60’s.

Even as the dementia that marked the last decade of her life advanced, she continued to be engaged with life and to show love and kindness to all she encountered.

Kate is survived by her husband of 57 years, David Popenoe, a Rutgers professor emeritus; her daughters Rebecca Popenoe, PhD of Stockholm, Sweden; and Julia Popenoe, MD of East Lansing, Michigan; her grandchildren Clara and Niklas Popenoe Thor, and Sarah and Silas Brainard; and her sons-in-law Johan Thor and Daniel Brainard. She is predeceased by her mother and father, Katharine J. Snyder Sassé and the Rev. Lewis Sassé II and her brother Lewis Sassé.

A burial service took place at her childhood church, St. Luke’s, Newtown Pa. A memorial service will be held on March 4, 2017 in Princeton.

Arrangements are by The Mather-Hodge Funeral Home Princeton.