MAXINE EDELMAN

EDELMAN--Maxine. Maxine Edelman, beloved mother, wife, and friend, died at her home in La Jolla, CA on July 8, 2022, after a long illness, surrounded by loved ones. She was 92 years old. Born on December 31, 1929, Maxine was a Brooklyn kid through and through, who believed the fireworks being set off on her birthday every year were for her. Her parents, Samuel and Doris Morrison, immigrants from the shtetls around Kiev, owned a clinical laboratory and oxygen business on Pitkin Avenue. As a kid, Maxine manned the switchboard and fed the rabbits. During WWII, young Maxine delighted in raising money for the war effort by building snowmen in the likeness of enemy leaders and charging people to throw snowballs at them. GIs were some of her best customers. She attended P.S. 189 Elementary School, P.S. 210 Junior High, and Thomas Jefferson High School, before getting her B.A. at Hunter College. Maxine met her husband Gerald Edelman on a blind date when they were 18 years old. They were married for 64 years before his death in 2014, and in that time, they traveled the world together, including a two-year sojourn in Paris and a notable trip to Stockholm in 1972 when Gerry accepted the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Before having their three children, Maxine got her Master's and teaching certificate. She helped put Gerry through medical school teaching kindergarten, a job she loved. All through her life, Maxine cultivated her love and knowledge of art in all its forms, expressing that love through both collecting and creating. Never caring for trends, she had a simple credo: if she loved it, it had a home in her collection. The same went for her own work; she let her love of color and vitality guide her. In her later years, when she was no longer able to travel, and walking became difficult, Maxine began to build in her bedroom a village made of discarded shoeboxes, recycled odds and ends, found objects, magazine cutouts and child's toys. Chaotic, colorful, imaginative, ephemeral, Maxine's Village represents her love of the world, life, people and creativity. The Village also represents the many "villages" Maxine had called home: her neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Manhattan, the Neuilly neighborhood of Paris, the town of Vinalhaven in Maine, and the village of La Jolla. In all these places, Maxine is remembered and beloved as a deeply kind and colorful character. Maxine is survived by us, her three children, Eric, David, and Judith. Our lives were filled with music, art, learning, and love because she was our mother.