|
CAROL JULIA Age 74, died Monday morning at Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque after suffering a cardiac arrest at her home Sunday afternoon. She had lived, worked and thrived with a serious heart condition for more than 20 years. Carol was born on June 2, 1937, in New York City, to Charles Cohen and Eda (Grelick) Cohen. After the death of her father, Carol was raised by Eda and other relatives on the Mohegan Colony near Peekskill, N.Y. The colony, an anarchist collective, inspired Carol's passion for nature, art and education. Her Russian and French relatives gave her a cosmopolitan outlook on living. She studied art at Bennington College in Vermont for two years and then went to work for her beloved Uncle Andre in Manhattan. She met her husband-to-be, Warren "Wally" Anthony Munro, over the phone when his work for American Express led him to call her uncle's firm. The remainder of her life would be dedicated to the happiness of Wally and their children. The two became life partners in 1962, and lived a bohemian life in Greenwich Village, where Carol frequently performed as a folk singer, including a performance at the famous Circle in the Square. Son Bruce Alexander Munro was born in 1968, and the family moved in 1969 to an ancestral Munro home on the moors of Scotland where Wally wrote and Carol lived as a homemaker. After the birth of their daughter, Eda May Munro, in 1972, the family moved to Murcia in Andalucia, Spain, where Carol taught the family, which added Thomas Charles Munro in 1975 and Robert Roy Munro in 1978, while Wally taught private English lessons. In 1979 the family moved to Albuquerque, where Wally performed a variety of jobs while Carol worked as a secretary for Bechtel (on the WIPP Project), First Presbyterian Church and the American Lung Association, and then began a career of nearly three decades as a medical transcriptionist. Over the course of her career, Carol worked at the Lovelace, Presbyterian and UNM hospitals, as well as the Heart Hospital of New Mexico and the former Wyoming Day Surgery. Wally died in 1994 after a long battle with cancer, and after her last child graduated from high school Carol moved back to New York state, living in Yonkers, N.Y., and working at Lawrence Hospital from 1999 to 2002. She then returned to Albuquerque, where she lived out the rest of her life with her beloved son Bruce. She retired in late 2010. She was kind and generous with her children, sacrificing her own comfort and her limited income for their sake throughout her life. Carol was a talented artist in pencil, pen-and-ink and watercolors. She was a voracious reader of the classics and had a particular love for the novels of Charles Dickens. She was a talented and inspiring teacher whose children distinguished themselves at Harvard, Smith, Rensselaer Polytechnic and UNM. She was a talented alto singer who studied with local teachers and sang as a soloist and chorister with a number of church choirs, including a long stint at First Presbyterian, where she was a member. She sang with the choir at Trinity United Methodist under the direction of her son Thomas in her final years. She loved train travel, gardening, decorating her home, collecting art books and antiquing. In her late life she became a writer, completing the novel "Bittersweet," a fictionalized account of life at Mohegan Colony, shortly before her death. She leaves sister Susie Springer; brother-in-law Jack Springer, both of the Bronx; sons Thomas, Bruce and Robert, of Albuquerque; daughter, Eda, of Tokyo, Japan; daughters-in-law Cristina (Olcott) Munro and Heather Hansen-Munro; granddaughers Britton Hansen and Clara Hansen-Munro; grandsons Reece Munro and Spencer Hansen-Munro, all of Albuquerque; cousin Arthur Grelick, of Chicago; cousins David Milford and Elizabeth Milford, of Albuquerque; and numerous other cousins, nieces and nephews. A Memorial will be held at 11:00 a.m. Monday, Nov. 21, at Trinity United Methodist Church, which is located at 3715 Silver Ave. SE in Albuquerque's Nob Hill, with a reception to follow at Carol and Bruce's home.
|
