Remembering Roni Chernin (Levy) died March 2026

Today, March 26, 2026 I had lunch at Maritsa's in Maple Shade with an old college friend, Diane Paul. The other things we have in common are that we are both practicing artists, and we both grew up in Maple Shade, NJ. At present we both have portraits at The Station in Merchantville, NJ. At the end of our lunch, Diane told me that another friend of ours Roni Chernin, who I always think of as Roni Chernin Levy, because that is the name she had when we first met in college in the 70's, had died this month in Costa Rica.

We had seen one another over the years because Roni's father lived in Cherry Hill until he died a few years ago, and she would visit Diane when she visited her father. During her father's last years we spent a lot of time together as she was home for a long time taking care of him. At that time, Diane had her Main Street Art Gallery and shop and five of us Rutgers alumni got together there to paint and also we went to the big picnic shelter in Collingswood to paint outdoors.

When Roni and I first became friends at Rutger's University, we were both married, unhappily to some extent. My ex-husband and I went to Passover at the home of Roni and her husband one Spring. In the 80's we both got divorced. The next time Roni and I ran into one another she became the fuse that made the explosion in my life.

Around 1987, Roni had a show of her work at a bar/gallery on South Street. I no longer remember the name, something like Club Bacchus? Anyhow, I remember one piece in particular, a full size paper silhouette with the stomach section ripped out and hanging. Sitting alone at one of the small tables the night of the opening, Roni came over to talk and explained to PREGNANT me, that the piece represented the painful period of her abortion. She was living with a guy in Germantown, a musician and it was a rocky relationship not likely to last and she had decided to terminate the pregnancy which was more traumatic than she had predicted.

I can't remember exactly how pregnant I was at the time, about mid way through, so about 5 to 6 months I guess, and already I was seeing the red flags, in particular at that art opening where my partner was paying significant attention to one of his many ex-girlfriends from the Philadelphia art scene of the time. I was sad, Roni was sad.

it was due to Roni that I had met the man who became the father of my child. While Roni was living with her boyfriend in Germantown, around 1980, she had a New Year's Eve party. I had become separated, not yet divorced, and was living in a 2nd floor apartment on 8th Street in Philadelphia establishing residence so I could go to graduate school at Tyler Art School.

Sometime around 1985 or 86, Roni sent some friends who were coming to her New Year's Eve party from South Philadelphia to pick me up and bring me with them. At the party, they disappeared and I drifted through the noise and the strangers to an easy chair in a secluded corner of the living room and took out my cigarettes but I had no matches. Out of the gloom came a tall handsome bearded blond man in a gray t shirt and black yoga pants. He knelt in front of me and brought out some matches and lit my cigarette. He said, "You don't look happy." And I replied that I was not. He offered me a ride home as he was leaving and would be driving through my neighborhood to get to his and I accepted the offer.

He told me he was an artist and he invited me to see his work and I went to his studio on 5th and Dickenson Street, a squat in an old abandoned row house synagogue.

We fell in love and had an affair and I fell pegnant. I was 37 and I discoverd he was much younger. To be fair, I must add he was 6 feet tall and bearded and construction worker brawney, so he didn't look his age which was 27. I hadn't got fat yet, and had been in a modern dance group for 10 years so I was more or less fit and fairly youthful looking for my age. Neither of us could have known the age difference or the difference it would make.

I didn't see Roni again for many years. She had moved to Colorado and done well in web design in the burgeoning world of the internet. I would hear news about her from friends, so I found out that she sold the house she had designed and had built on a mountain in Colorado and used the money to buy a coffee plantation in Costa Rica. She had become disenchanted by the far rightward swing of the politics of the time - the Bush era.

When she came home to take care of her father, in the 2020's maybe it was for a year, Diane, Roni and another couple of Rutger's classmate/artists friends (MaryAlice and Robert) began to hang out at Diane's studio/shop and to paint in the picnic shelter in Collingswood. I made a painting of us together there. Roni told us she had converted her coffee plantation to organic produce. She was very interested in tile and mosaic at that time and was busy tiling her open air home. She was very happy in Costa Rica; she spoke fluent Spanish but also participated in an active expat group of artists.

Just now, when I got home, I looked Roni Chernin up on the internet, to see if there was an obituary but what I found was FincaContaros was hosting a Memorial Bird Walk with a bird club of which Roni was a member. She would have loved that. Roni was only in her late 60's too young to die. She was such a creative person in her life as well as her art and a brave adventurer. Whenever I think of her, I will think of the vibrant jungle full of colorful birds singing and flying through the dense jungle canopy. Happy Trails Roni wrightj45@yahoo.com