Gloria Becker

The daughter of William and Betty Oxman of Boston, Gloria's father died young in 1941, leaving his wife with three children. Gloria, as the oldest, helped her widowed mother to raise her brother, Robert and sister, Marlene. Married before her 20th birthday to Arthur Becker, a young attorney from Norwich, Connecticut, she decided to forego a college education and started a family. Gloria and Art had two sons, Bill and Ross, and the family moved first to the Hartford area and later to Chicago, Philadelphia, and Harrisburg, before Gloria and Art retired to Dataw Island, SC and Charlotte, NC.

Gloria was a contemporary artist for more than 20 years, beginning in the early 1960s. She started as a painter and later became known as a sculptor, working in bronze, making sculptural jewelry, and producing strikingly modern pieces from structural aluminum and Plexiglas. Her work was shown in galleries and exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago.

After both of her sons completed their college educations, Gloria decided it was her turn. She began taking night courses at the University of Pennsylvania while in her 40s and in 1979 graduated with combined Bachelor's and Master's degrees in American Studies. She was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and named outstanding student in Continuing Education. In 1984, she earned her Ph.D. from Penn in American Civilization, specialized in archaeology, material culture, and historic preservation. She worked in those fields as a lecturer for Penn State University (Harrisburg), as a researcher in history at the State Museum of Pennsylvania, and as

Preservation Director at Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County.

Gloria also volunteered her services, serving as Vice President of the North Shore Art League in Chicago, and working on an ambitious project on the history of the Jewish community of Charlotte for display at Temple Israel.

Even in retirement in Charlotte, Gloria never stopped learning. She fulfilled a personal goal by studying for her Bat Mitzvah at Temple Israel.

The loss of her son, Ross and of Ross's wife, Judi in 2001 was a terrible blow to the Becker family. In her final years, Gloria suffered from Alzheimer's disease, which took her life February 22, 2016 at a nursing home in West Bloomfield, Michigan. She was 84.

She is survived by her husband of 65 years, Arthur Becker; by her son, Bill (Fran) of Huntington Woods, Michigan; by her sister, Marlene Gray of Waltham, Massachusetts; her brother, Robert (Rivka) Oxman of Caesarea, Israel; and by her grandchildren, Andrew Becker of San Francisco and Caroline Becker of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

A service by the graveside will be held at 1:30 p.m. on Thursday, February 25th, at Hebrew Cemetery, 1801 Statesville Ave., Charlotte, with Rabbi Murray Ezring officiating.