Geraldine Cohen

COHEN, Geraldine Pfaff

Gerri was not just a pillar of community, she poured the foundation. Family and friends naturally orbited around her because through thick and thin, she would be there, holding them up, helping them get through the difficulties of life with open-hearted grace and humor. Solar-powered, she loved the beach, science, education, the Moravian Church, and the myriad people who loved her back. Atha Geraldine Pfaff Cohen, 91, Wilmington, North Carolina, died peacefully on September 18, 2025.

She was born in Winston Salem, in 1934 to Claude Rufus Pfaff and Mabel Atha Wolff Pfaff, who gave her a loving and stable upbringing and engendered in her a deep love for the summer migration to the Lullaby, their cottage at Carolina Beach, even through the vicissitudes of WWII. Gerri was a model student at Reynolds High School, where she met her lifelong pal, Jean Pascoe, and at UNC-Greensboro, then a women's college, graduating to become an analytical chemist at American Cyanamid. On a drafting stint at Winston's Western Electric, she met Gerald Cohen, her husband of 67 years, a bond that brimmed with exploration, e.g., Broadway musicals, dates in the library to appreciate music on the old LPs, and taking beloved nieces and nephews off on an adventure.

When Gerri and Gerry had their own kids, their passion for learning through exploration continued to flourish with trips to the Catskill Game Farm, Sterling Hill Mine, John Pennekamp in Key Largo, and holiday pilgrimages back to Winston. "You guys were a lot of fun," Gerri'd say. Whether hauling hot chocolate to the skating rink, rowing the Sweet Pea at night and pointing out walking catfish, setting up a cub scouts gathering, crafting for a Candle Tea at First Moravian Church of Georgia, composing a school chicken report, stringing fish heads for crabbing, leading nature walks, packing up for the next kid's trip to/from college, knocking on doors with Jack Vaiden (her very dear friend and pastor), cutting a joke in water aerobics class, beating us all in Hearts, picking pockets out of dresses, scrubbing gravestones at Easter, sewing Littles (security blankets), having her students create a paper cube to demonstrate the metric system, or (even just last month) handing out Halloween candy, she solidly came through for us, no matter the age or affiliation. No surprise that she herself went back to college after the kids were grown and earned a Master's in Science Education, having the time of her life culling sea creatures on a Biloxi shrimp boat, snorkeling in Saint John, V.I., and lighting an enduring fire of inquisitiveness inside her students at Marietta's Dodgen Middle School.

No matter who you were, she would best you at loving life.

More than just a mother, grandmother, teacher, or neighbor, she was a verb to such an extent that you might ask yourself, "Can you Gerri?"

Gerri was preceded in death by her parents; and older brothers, Harry Atha Pfaff and Claude Robert Pfaff. She is survived by her husband, Gerald; her children: Theron Lee Cohen, Claudette Cohen, and Jeffrey Cohen; and her six grandchildren, including Atha Michel, Will Cohen, Sarah Brooks, Lauren Cohen, Ada Cohen and Rabbit Cohen.

A Celebration of Life is TBA. Donations to the Moravian Church or the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center would be appreciated.

Interment is 2 PM, on November 24, at Pfafftown Christian Church Cemetery, Pfafftown, NC.