Cornelia V Aro

Cornelia was an Akronite for most of the last seven decades. She was a passionate supporter of the performing arts in Northeast Ohio, a season subscriber to Ohio Light Opera, Tuesday Musical concerts, Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom Music Center, and in earlier decades, the Kenley players, Ohio Ballet, Cleveland Ballet, and Cleveland Opera. She will be remembered for the hats, gloves and flower corsages she wore, and her frequent backstage conversations with performers.

Cornelia was born in 1925 in Chicago, Illinois, to Romanian parents living in Canton, Ohio, and was taken to live in Romania as a baby. She spent her early years living with extended family in Bistrița, then living with her mother in Cluj and finally, in Bucharest. She started drawing almost before she could read and write. She was bilingual in Romanian and Hungarian from an early age. She became a talented student and gifted artist, and excelled in sports, particularly track and speed skating.

She was obsessed with cinema from an early age, and until late in life she had an encyclopedic knowledge of Hollywood’s golden age. She corresponded with many actors, directors and, because of her cartooning abilities, Walt Disney. In a letter, he said that he would keep her hand painted Easter egg decorated with Disney characters in his office. During her last five years in Bucharest, she attended classes at the Jean Georgescu Academy of Cinema, and sang in a four-girl “American music” group (called “Two plus Two”) which performed for the American legation in Bucharest. Meanwhile, she worked as a clerk in the Romanian Ministry of Finance. At the same time, she founded and edited a Romanian cinema magazine named “Ecran” (Screen).

As Soviet military and political forces took over Romanian society and commerce, her magazine was closed and many friends, family and colleagues were imprisoned, With the support of her family, Cornelia decided to leave Romania and apply for repatriation to the U.S. Approval was granted in 1947 and, travelling on the Liberty ship “Abraham Clark” with other repatriated Romanians, she landed in Baltimore in June 1947.

Returning to Ohio, where her family had roots, she attended Kent State University briefly, then night school at John Carroll University. She lived first in Canton before establishing herself in Cleveland. After a stint as an apprentice in an advertising arts agency in Cleveland, she worked mostly as a cashier, bookkeeper and record keeper, including at the Taylor Department Store, the Fred Harvey Company, and the Cleveland Board of Education. She met her husband, Ants Aro, originally from Estonia, at an international university students’ group in Cleveland. They married in 1954. That same year, Ants joined the Firestone Tire & Rubber Company and entered the engineering trainee program in Akron. During their first two years in Akron, they lived on East Avenue, and Cornelia worked at a trucking company, Orr Service, as a bookkeeper.

Ants’ work with Firestone took them first to Des Moines, Iowa, where Linda, their only child, was born in 1959. Thereafter, the family moved to Decatur, Illinois, before moving briefly back to West Akron. In 1965, Ants was assigned to the international division of Firestone, and the family spent most of the next 12 years living overseas. They spent three years each in England, Italy and Sweden and almost two years in Sydney, Australia. Cornelia was active in international women’s groups in Sydney, and in Rome, Italy and Stockholm, Sweden, and continued designing and making art while immersing herself in music and theater wherever she went.

The family returned to Akron in 1977, where she became involved in supporting the International Institute of Akron, was a guide at Stan Hywet, served briefly with the Tuesday Musical Association, and was a member of Akron Woman’s City Club.

Cornelia is survived by her daughter, Linda Aro, and son-in-law, Chris Pfaff, of Montclair, New Jersey; her sister-in-law, Tina Naykki of Raleigh, North Carolina; and her nieces, Laura (Steve) Emery and Karen (Buddy) Ballentine and their children. She was predeceased by her parents, Coriolan and Florence, and by her husband of nearly 63 years, Ants. She is remembered with love by her many friends and their families in many corners of the world, as well as by her extended family in Romania, and by her late husband’s extended family in Estonia. She is mourned and sorely missed by both her dear friends and her caregivers in the Akron area.

She will be memorialized, first with visitation hours for family and friends, to be held Friday, July 10, 2026 from 3pm to 7pm at Rose Hill Funeral Home, 3653 W Market St, Akron. The following day, Saturday, July 11, 2026, a funeral service will be held at 10AM at St George Romanian Byzantine Catholic Cathedral, 1121 44th St NE, Canton, OH, followed by burial at Rose Hill Burial Park, 3653 W Market St, Akron. (There will be a gathering of vehicles in procession, leaving Rose Hill Funeral Home at 9am that morning.) For those unable to attend, a live feed of the funeral service only will be available during the service at stgeorge.click2stream.com/

In lieu of flowers, donations could be made in Cornelia’s name to any of the following:

• The International Institute of Akron (an immigrant and refugee support organization) https://www.iiakron.org/

• International Rescue Committee https://www.rescue.org/

• The Metropolitan Opera https://www.metopera.org/

• Arthritis Foundation https://www.arthritis.org/

One of Cornelia’s favorite sayings, born of her life experience, was

“Nu ştii de unde Sare iepurele!”

(translated from Romanian: ‘You don’t know where the rabbit jumps from!”)