Aleph Abernathy Woolfolk

Born in 1924 in Greer, South Carolina, a small mill town, Aleph Abernathy Woolfolk and her life, choices, and values were deeply shaped by ‘the American Century.’  Her mill-worker parents migrated with their six young children to Point Pleasant, New Jersey, to start a new life in 1929 – just weeks before the stock market crash.  Aleph recalled times of privation during her childhood, but her family persevered, sometimes with government jobs and ‘handouts.’  By decade’s end, her parents owned their own beach-front restaurant, where Aleph spent summers waitressing.  Her parents did not graduate from high school, but instilled in Aleph a strong work ethic and a love of reading and learning.  They were deeply proud when Aleph completed a degree in teaching from Winthrop College (SC) and began a Master’s at Columbia University.  Aleph recalled traveling south by train to college in the fall of 1942, when mobilizing GI’s filled the aisles, and the southern waiting rooms were segregated by race.  Her college years were marked by war, with her brothers and male peers all at the front, and food rations, black-out curtains, and German subs off-shore at home.

After college and with the war over, Aleph began teaching high school English, Latin, and French in Cambridge, a small town on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.  She lived in a shared room of a boarding house with the other single female teachers. She described the intimacy of small-town life there, and taking ferries across waterways to get to and from New Jersey.   It was here that she met and married her husband of 32 years, J. George Woolfolk.  Female teachers were not allowed to work once pregnant, so Aleph stopped working several months before she gave birth to the first of her four children, a son, and settled into the long-term career of homemaker.

Soon afterwards, she and George relocated to Newark, DE for his job; three daughters followed, and Aleph spent the rest of her life here.  She was a loving and focused mom, organized home-maker, and conscientious community member who volunteered regularly for the family’s church, schools, and clubs.  Her personal passions were education, needlework and gardening, and she created knowledge and beauty for many with these pastimes.  She sewed her daughters’ dresses, needle-pointed kneelers for her Newark United Methodist Church, and participated actively in her local garden club.  In her garden, she became especially interested in native plants, and used her woodland to support local birds and propagate hundreds of native trillium and other increasingly rare wildflowers.  She also greatly enjoyed her membership in the Delaware chapter of the American Association of University Women, serving in leadership positions and actively participating in book clubs, gourmet dinners, and educational programs.  She and her husband George loved to travel together near and far and competed in several friendly bridge groups.

Aleph was widowed at the relatively young age of 58, a severe loss for her. However, in the stoic and determined way she used to handle most of life’s struggles, Aleph was able to recover and enjoy a long period of active retirement, continuing to travel around the world, volunteer for organizations she cared about, and most of all, support her four adult children in raising her nine beloved grandchildren.  Her love and commitment to her family created a sense of safety and gratitude for the four families she and her husband George spawned.  In her last several years of life, Aleph struggled with Alzheimer’s, but she remained a joy to her family and inspired love among the staff who cared for her at The Summit in Newark.  She is survived by her late son John’s wife Patricia Brandon (offspring Ava and John), her daughters Paula (husband Jean Taquet and offspring Lucille and Eric), Ann (husband Doug Kwart and offspring Victor and Valerie), and Virginia (husband William Gardiner and offspring Annie, Tom, and Emma).  A burial is planned for the spring.

Contributions in lieu of flowers may be made to the Delaware Valley Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association or the Newark United Methodist Church.