Roslyn Wellner

Roslyn Wellner

Roslyn Bell Levinson Wellner, 89, died Wednesday, April 8 at her home at Renaissance Village in Manchester Township, NJ. She was 89 and had been suffering the aftereffects of a fall for most of the last year.

Roslyn Anne Bell was the third of five children of Max and Pauline (nee Schneck) Bell. She graduated from Lafayette High School in Brooklyn and got a Bachelor's degree from New York University, with a year at the University of Chicago in between.

She is remembered for her piercing intelligence, an acerbic wit and a wicked backhand on the tennis court.

She lived in Bergenfield, N.J. for 32 years, where she raised four children with her first husband, Abe Levinson (d. 1974). She married Kermit Wellner in 1977, adding skiing to her repertoire of sports. They lived in Windham, N.Y. until his death in 2001.

Her struggles with obesity led her to carve out a successful niche as a lecturer on weight control issues in the 1960s and early '70s. She had a second career after the death of her first husband as an employment counselor in Hackensack, where she worked for Snelling and Snelling, and Ridgewood, where she headed her own firm.

Mrs. Wellner is survived by two sisters, Frieda Berkowitz of Belleville, NJ; and Cele Brateman of Boynton Beach, FL, and a brother, Harold Bell of Highland Beach, FL; her four children, Warren Levinson of West Orange, NJ; Larry Levinson of Princeton, NJ; Susan Cramer of Granville, OH; and Caryn Breen of Fort Thomas, KY, as well as seven grandchildren and two great-grandsons, and Harvey Braaf of Manchester, who, in addition to being a loving and loyal companion for the last ten years, helped teach her golf.

She was interred at a brief private service at King Solomon Memorial Park in Clifton, NJ on Friday, April 10. A memorial service is pending.