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LAURIE OURLICHT Obituary
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Memories and Condolences
for LAURIE OURLICHT
Judith Prescott
January 3, 2024
I will never forget lovely Laurie whose smile lit up a room. She was a wonderful ESL teacher & we worked together for several years. A remarkable person.
Judith Prescott
Carlos Ivan Monserrate
January 3, 2021
Big smile, Big heart, that is how I remember Laurie from the USC summers. RIP Laurie
Peter Flieg
January 3, 2021
Laurie continues to live on in our memories , a very special person.
Judith Prescott
August 27, 2011
Laurie and I taught ESL together in the mid 1990's. I knew she was an artist but she was also a wonderful creative, caring teacher. I remember her as being so warm--always smiling, never seeming unhappy. She was full of life and a delightful person to know and work with. I remember how thrilled she was at the birth of her son. I spoke to her when she first became ill--it never occurred to me that she wouldn't survive. I was shocked and saddened to learn of her passing, but reading all the condolences, I realize what an amazing and full life she led. Laurie, although we weren't close friends, I'll always remember you with love and admiration.
Judith Prescott, New York, New York
gladys Thompson - roth
May 11, 2011
They were all there
They were all there,
her brother, his wife, the son, the parent
the artists, the midwives, the friends
the violin, the autoharp, the harmonica
the accordion, the guitar, the gospel singer
Voices lifted to honor, to remember
voices lifted to acknowledge, to praise
The life of Laurie ended too soon
her commitment, her courage, her creativity
resounded in the room embracing her talent
reflecting beauty and unflinching ideals
her soul exposed, her spirit bared
Her humanity will not be forgotten
Gladys Thompson-Roth 4/23/11
Laurie took this shot
Prince Alum
May 7, 2011
Laurie took this shot
Prince Alum
May 7, 2011
guests at the dinner
Prince Alum
May 7, 2011
folks at the table
Prince Alum
May 7, 2011
at the table in the middle of a debate
Prince Alum
May 7, 2011
at the last dinner with Laurie
Prince Alum
May 7, 2011
laurie & Dad
Prince Alum
May 7, 2011
Prince Alum
May 7, 2011
Like a candle in the wind,
It seems just like yesterday,
Your laughter still echo's in the kitchen,
At that dinner party in Great Neck to celebrate my survival.
You were so keen to see my prosthesis,
Amazed to see how unshakking i was in front of life shattering challenge like mine,
Little did i know that it was a goodbye dinner.
You have faught a good fight. long years of spirited fight for survival.
Go in peace to the great beyond,the Angels will welcome you with open hands.
I will keep an eye in the sky hopping to see you twinkle with the stars.
The Lord will console you and take care of whatever you left behind, especially your son Sam, your loving father Boris and caring brother David.
Wizard of Oz Rehearsal at USC '68
Donald Cunnigen
April 24, 2011
Jo and Wally Rymer & Brown
April 22, 2011
Memories of Laurie as a beautiful activist teenager in Great Neck are so vivid. There are our recollections of Laurie as an gifted and exhibiting artist
PETER FLIEG
March 31, 2011
LOOKING FORWARD TO CELEBRATING LAURIE OURLICHTS REMARKABLE LIFE WITH HER FAMILY AND FRIENDS THIS APRIL 2011.
WE WILL ALL HAVE LAURIE IN OUR HEARTS AND MINDS FOR ETERNITY. MAY HER SON SAM CARRY THE TORCH AND MAKE LAURIE PROUD.
Laurie, So glad we got to meet again last Fall at the camp reunion. We remember you so fondly for your gentle nature and your beautiful smile.
Emily Socolov
March 30, 2011
Stuart Granoff
January 27, 2011
Laurie was a funny, fearless, smart, sassy woman who made her own realities, who argued infuriatingly and hilariously, who could draw and sculpt and etch and make prints and organize color and mold paper in ways that were exciting, beautiful, inspiring. I always felt honored by her friendship. I miss my friend and I remember her with love.
Charles Lee
January 25, 2011
I shared the summer of 1968 with Laurie at USC in workcamp and remember her fondly. Being a part of a select group to enjoy that year's WC experience I recall it to be one of the best summers that I enjoyed at camp. Laurie was so full of life and adventure and she was a great influence to me. Sadly, the reunion time in Sept. was much too short to be really able to converse in depth with her, but the little time we did spend talking will not be forgotten. She will be greatly missed by all who knew her and who were touched by her presence. I know I will miss her!! My deepest and sincerest condolences go to her family. Although Laurie is no longer with us in body, her spirit and soul will always be in our hearts and minds.
Carol Dixon-Hugh
January 24, 2011
We, the Midwives at Kings County Hospital want to remember Laurie as the artistic, dedicated , kind ,passionate,spirited and gentle person she was, a true midwife in every sense. She touched many lives during her time with us and was loved by her patients.We will continue to cherish the priveleged time she spent with us as family. She will be sorely missed. To Sam, we feel like you are our son too, know your mom loved you and spoke highly of you. To you ,her immediate family and friends, we extend our deep condolence from our department head of obs.service, Dr Charles Bowers, all the Midwives and our entire obstetrical department.
Carol Dixon- Hugh, CNM. (Midwifery Coordinator-KCHC)
Samuel Ourlicht
January 18, 2011
i would just like to say thank you to everyone who has written something here. It gives me strength to know that my mom will never be forgotten by anyone and that she was such a huge impact on so many lives mine espicially. i mean growing up you where my mother and father i didnt need anyone else you showed me the way and taught me just about everything i know. thanks mom i love you so much and i miss you. We all do.
Rima Rosenthal
January 17, 2011
Laurie lives on in my memory of her glorious smile, her enthusiasm for life and her wonderful artwork.
Rima
January 15, 2011
Saturday,January 15, 2011, 4 AM
As the Leonard Cohen song goes, "It's four in the morning, and New York is sleeping, I'm writing this letter . . ." because the only way I can think of what to say is to speak directly to you. I was so overjoyed to see you and your tall son, Samuel, this last September at the University Settlement Camp reunion up in Beacon. First, because I didn't expect to be invited by my daughters, and campmates, Becky and Amy, and secondly, because when I saw how well and beautiful you looked I felt the same elation I had decades earlier when I was told my wife's illness was in remission. And just as devastated when I was informed while in Arizona coincidentally visiting one of your father's friends, to hear of your succumbing to a secondary effect of your long illness, just as my Irene did. I just realized that you were both about the same ages. I remeber the time before that at the Coop movie, showing your grandmother, aunts and father and mother, and that as you were about to enter a car, spotted me in the restaurant window and had to come in to hug me, and thirty years ago, when we had a large group camping in Montauk and you came with me in a motor home, and you made me stop at a market, because we had to have fresh dill for our morning omellettes' and so many more. You will leave a hole in the fabrics of not only your family's lives but in my family as well. I will try to visit your family shortly to tell them so.
Love,
Herbie Freeman
Claire Lissance
January 12, 2011
Laurie was a kindred spirit. I met her when we taking grad courses in art at City College way back in 1978. I still remember her one-of-a kind experiments in printmaking-using her derriere as the plate. I remember our professor thought it was great and I wished I had that kind of creative chutzpah that she so made part of her own visual tapestry. She introduced me to the Village Halloween parade and I believe she was Michael Jackson in an early healthy incarnation. Though I have not seen Laurie since either 1984 or 1983, we found each other by internet several years ago. I will always remember her joie de vivre, wild hair, infectious laugh and twinkling eyes. I have print of hers--an etching--we had traded art all those years ago. I will always treasure it. I am sorry that I never knew her in person later in life but I was so amazed at her reinvention as a midwife while fighting cancer. Laurie, I hope you will find beauty, love and happiness in your new existence. What a loss that our world has lost you at a such a tender age.
My heart goes out to your family.
January 12, 2011
From a fellow nurse and USC friend, upon entering the gates of heaven God will reward you with eternal peace for all the women and children you cared for.
You will be missed Laurie.......Ivan Monserrate
Kesho Scott
January 11, 2011
Our conversations were always about our childhood days, beauty, politics, our parents, family, our children, my recovery and the crazy world. I have so many memories of Laurie and I moon bathing, wearing look-a-like red dresses, fights over who would marry Ricky Nelson, her art and summer visit to Iowa in Cowboy boots, laughs about internet dating, eating cheap fast foods on my visits to New York and train rides to Great Neck. She'd send me "New York" music tapes to Iowa and I'd share my latest adventures in Africa and all the while knowing we were a deeper voice in each other when life was its best and most challenging. Laurie was an inspiration to me, always. We always thought that we'd end up combing each others grey hair and laughing about the "new things" out there....but this dream will not happen. But my memories of her are some of the best in my lfe. My heat goes out to Uncle Boris and Rita and David and his family. I am sure you were champions in her last months ans she has been a champion in many of our lives. I will miss her contagious laughter always.
Kesho Scott
January 11, 2011
Our conversations were always about our childhood days, our parents, the political world and our children. We had always imagined that we'd be combing each others gray hair and laughing about "new things" so this moment is a lost of that dream. But the memories of the look-a-like red dresses, moon watching on hot summer days, singing Ricki Nelson music in Detroit, buying her art, her coming to Iowa for a visit in Cowboy boots, eaing the cheap New York fast food on my visits and traveling to Great Neck on the train...remain the best memories in my life. Laurie was always my inspiration! She was another deep voice inside of me and I her...and it is with the greatest of love and shared memories of Laurie that I send Laurie's family, my family in New York, my heart at this time.
Christine Kluthe
January 10, 2011
Laurie, I had hoped so much to see you again in March after 35 years.You were a very precious person to me and I´m very sad that you had to go so suddenly and so early.Sending my deepest sympathies to your son, your brother, your father and the family.
January 10, 2011
Sending our deepest sympathies and hoping that those who knew and loved Laurie can find the strength and support of family and the community to help through this difficult and heartbreaking time.
Much love to brother David and the entire family
Michael Krauss
Donald Cunnigen
January 10, 2011
I just came across a photograph of Laurie in a rehearsal for a performance of the "Wizard of Oz" at University Settlement Camp where we were Work Campers in 1968. It reminded me of the good times that we shared as campers in the heady days of the late '60s. In my mind, Laurie was just so cool. I enjoyed being with her. All of my camp photographs of her show a huge Afro and a huge smile.
I was the only Black camper who came from Mississippi. For New Yorkers like Laurie, I was a rather exotic part of the camp community. Of course, they were just as exotic for me.
After camp, she wrote me letters (with plenty of free hand drawings in the margins) occasionally about her life. When I came to visit my aunt in Manhattan, I contacted her every now and then about what was happening in her life.
After high school, we went on our different paths. I went to Tougaloo College, a Black college in Mississippi; and she attended State University of New York at Fredonia. We both went on to graduate school, i. e., Harvard and Temple. Like so many of my New York camp friends, her life appeared to be filled with exciting adventures. I am certain she brought joy and kindness to everyone she met in those adventures. Those are the memories that I have about my relationship with Laurie.
Within recent years, we reconnected after I read an article about her in Essence magazine. We shared our personal stories about dealing with cancer. We discussed our parents' bouts with cancer, i. e., my father who passed away in 2000 had prostate cancer (as did her father who is a survivor); and my mother has been a breast cancer survivor since 1999 and her mother passed on from cancer. We spoke after the national broadcast of the COOPS documentary that included a poignant description of her family members, especially the relationship of her parents.
As with so many things, I promised to come down from Rhode Island to visit her. She was a bit upset with me when I failed to contact her after coming to the city for an exhibit at the Museum of Jewish History. The exhibit featured Black students and Jewish scholars who taught at Black colleges in the South. As a part of a group of black college graduates who were included in the exhibit, the museum hosted a variety of activities in conjunction with the opening. Consequently, I simply never got around to contacting Laurie. The things that we regret in life.
With deepest sympathy,
Donald Cunnigen
Marcy Perlman Tardio
January 9, 2011
I met Laurie as a Camp Kinderland mother. Our parents (my mother: Shelley Kitzes Tenzer) knew each other since their days as young people from the COOPS. Laurie and I were both midwives. Although our paths crossed infrequently, our common political roots and involvement in the arts, as well as being single moms of sons and as women who provided healthcare for women, I felt tender feelings for her. I share great sadness with the many who grieve her so untimely loss.
Lois Wilcken
January 9, 2011
May your soul be at peace, Laurie. To Laurie's family, please accept my most heartfelt condolences.
Lois
Nancy Gabor
January 9, 2011
Paul and I became friends with Laurie and Sam in Amsterdam when they stayed in our studio a few years ago. She has been our neighbor in Westbeth and we have had warm and friendly times together. I admired Laurie enormously, and will miss her very much. We send our heartfelt sympathy to Sam and the family.
Nancy Gabor
Paul Binnerts
Peter Flieg
January 9, 2011
Pain and suffering is for the living but not for those that have passed.
Laurie graced our world with more love and good than most.
She seemed not to suffer or project sadness. Perhaps only those who truly love the world and those around them can face the end with such dignity and grace. Laurie was truly blessed and will continue to be so. Lets hope as is apparent Laurie hoped that she is in a better beaufiful place still spreading her love.
Peter Flieg
Peter Flieg
January 9, 2011
All in all life is not fair. At one point in time or another the worst imaginable creeps upon us. Laurie Ourlicht an intelligent, creative, loving person got hit with one of those unimaginable situations head on at too young an age. She staved off the inevitable for a time more than anyone expected and she never flinched. It was as if she knew something about the afterlife that none of us know. Since we will all spend more time there than in this so called life, perhaps it really is a better place for Laurie and all of us.
May Laurie now rest in Peace.
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