Roselyn Slotkin was born January 14, 1917 in Brooklyn, a charter member of the Greatest Generation; survived the 1918 Flu; suffered through the Great Depression, which forced her to leave college early. She married Herman Slotkin, her childhood sweetheart – they met in elementary school. They had very different but complementary temperaments, and their marriage was loving and extraordinarily close. It was hard when she lived alone for fifteen years after his death. But her strength in dealing with her life alone was remarkable. She maintained herself in independent living practically to the end, despite virtual blindness.
She was devoted to her children, Richard (and Iris) and Ted (and Linda); her grandchildren, Joel (and Caroline), Alex (and Holly), Matt (and Emily) and Joanna (and Justin); her great-grandchildren, Zachary, Corey, Kai and Jack; and to her niece Susan (Sobel) Sagona (and Joe) and grand-niece Lauren Greenhow (and Sean). She was deeply engaged with everything they did: listened to their music, hung their paintings, read whatever they wrote starting with term papers and ending with articles and books.
She was very intelligent, an avid speed-reader all her life, and did the Times crossword every day – in ink. The worst part of her deteriorating eyesight was that it became extremely difficult to read and impossible to do the crossword. But she kept up with current events, and her opinions were characteristically smart and strong. She loved music and ballet and travel. In 1961 she proved her intrepidity by accompanying Ted and Rich on a mule-back ride to the bottom (almost) of the Grand Canyon. The mule tried to buck her off – and failed.
At the end she was clear about what she wanted. She fought off the effects of a broken hip and double-pneumonia, because she was determined to get out of the hospital and back to Applewood, where she felt comfortable.
When family and friends called her in the hospital she made sure to tell them that she loved them, just in case that was the last time. She repeated our Dad’s last words as her own goodbye: “I had a good run.” She died on April 25, 2020 at the age of 103 – at Applewood, peacefully, in her sleep.
