Charlotte Zimmerman Farber died peacefully on Monday July 18th, just a few months shy of her 100th birthday.
Charlotte was the last surviving sibling of the Monument Street Zimmerman clan of six children (siblings included Abraham, Rosaline, Lillian, Violet and Dorothy). Charlotte attended Portland High School and was a self-proclaimed lousy student. After high school, she went to work at Yudy’s tires. Shortly after WW2, she married David Farber, who was her best friend’s older brother. She then became the quintessential Jewish mother (and eventually grandmother and great grandmother) having two children, Maxine and her younger brother Ken. Charlotte and Dave were married for close to 50 years until Dave died in 2005.
Whether you loved her as Charlotte, mom or granny, you loved a truly wonderful, witty, somewhat irreverent, caring, fun-loving and resilient person who was that way right up until her death. A life of 100 years gives you ample time to draw a pretty good picture of Charlotte. She had many friends whom she loved, and to whom she was kind, and forgiving. She was continually making new friends (particularly after most of her lifelong friends had died.) Most importantly, Charlotte loved her family, daughter Maxine (Susan Berkman) and her son Ken (Heidi). She especially adored her grandchildren, Neil Sattin and Melissa Das (Subrata) and Dylan and Carly Farber and her four great grandchildren. She also loved her many nieces and nephews who doted on her as our matriarch these last few years. She showed her love through food, baking pies and cookies for everyone and always seeming to have a batch of brownies in the house containing at least two sticks of butter. When her kids were younger and cousins were at the house for lunch, there was an occasion when her egg salad went uneaten because of excess Miracle Whip, which for some cousins has caused lifelong trauma when a Miracle Whip jar appears.
Fun also defined Charlotte, as it was an essential part of her entire life. She was always game for doing anything that might be fun. She was an avid (and pretty good) bridge player, who played duplicate bridge twice a week right up until Covid. She took up tennis in her late 40s. She played mahjong for years until the other members of her group died. One vivid memory will always be when, in her early nineties, she sat on the deck of the swimming pool to have a view of her grandson, Dylan, compete in the State high school diving championships at Bowdoin.
It must be said that Charlotte wasn’t perfect. She was a very fussy eater and would always ask at restaurants that her soup be hot and that the French fries be extra crispy. She would never complain to the wait staff when the food inevitably did not meet her satisfaction, but the incident would be reported with the exact same words in repeated phone calls with friends and family. That said, she never had an unhappy meal with her husband when they frequently went to the old Roma café. Her only other flaw, if it could even be called that, was her penchant for the last 15 years (after her rather frugal husband died) or regularly buying new clothes and always at Talbot’s.
A special thanks to Shaun, Emily and Tracy for making it possible for Charlotte to live her last year at her home, to Hospice of Southern Maine, to cousins Julie and Jane who were always there for Charlotte, and especially to Sharon and Walter who shared Charlotte’s two-family home and watched over her with love and kindness like their own mom.
A graveside funeral will be held on Wednesday July 20th at 11 am at the Temple Beth El Memorial Park at 1 Johnson Road, Portland , Maine. Contributions in Charlotte’s memory can be made to Hospice of Southern Maine.