CELESTINE WARE

WARE--Celestine, sister of Ayn Marie Stewart, cousin of Thella Brooks, Janice Ilerio, and William Ware, Jr., died in New York City on August 21, 2010. She was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and graduated from Radcliffe College in 1962. A black feminist theorist and a member of the Stanton-Anthony Brigade, she was the author of "Woman Power: The Movement for Women's Liberation" (published in 1970, when her first name was still spelled Cellestine). Writer, editor, and TV producer, a loving friend, a fount of memorable quotations, a brilliant recommender of newly-hatched novels, a beautiful, inventively dressed woman, and a world-traveler, Celestine was interested in film, art, literature, black studies, history, music, feminism, politics, fashion, and food, and she was knowledgeable about them all. She bore her increasing ill health with great fortitude. One appropriate epitaph for her would be the lyrics she quoted when a friend of hers died too young: "Didn't she ramble, till the butcher cut her down!"