JOSEPHINE COHEN

El Dorado Funeral & Cremation Services - Placerville

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Josephine Lee Cohen, age 84, died peacefully on October 28th, 2017 at her cozy country home in Placerville, California after a brief struggle with gallbladder cancer. Jo was born and raised in Boulder, Colorado. She is predeceased by her Father, Joseph W. Cohen and her Mother, Beatrice Burris Cohen as well as her sister, Beatrice (Cohen) Koch. She is survived by her long-time Partner, Fran Carver, as well as her daughter, Rebecca (Carver) Worcester, her son-in-Law, Alfred Worcester, her two grandchildren, Katharine and Keegan Worcester and her nieces, Galen and Rachel Koch. 

Jo was a graduate of Boulder High School, 1950, and received a Psychology Degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder, in 1954. 

Jo was a rare individual who could see into the heart of a person and befriend them in one simple encounter. She was a person with insight and empathy who gave freely of herself and her talents throughout her long and successful life. 

She had a long career in varied capacities in the medical field as a biostatistician, a supervisor for Kaiser’s child development study in the 60’s. In 1975 she began work at Kaiser in Medical Records and worked her way up the career ladder, retiring as a Medical Coder. 

In her spare time, Jo was an accomplished artist, musician and storyteller. 

She will be dearly missed by her family and far flung circle of friends. 

A Celebration of Life will be held on November 19th, 2017 at 12:30 p.m. at the Placerville Shakespeare Club. If you are unable to attend, remembrances, stories and pictures can be shared on the www.placervillefuneralandcremation.com website with family and friends. 

EULOGY: 

Josephine Lee Cohen, 84, died peacefully on October 28th, 2017 at her cozy country home in Placerville, California after a brief struggle with Gallbladder Cancer. Jo was born and raised in Boulder, Colorado where her father, Joseph W. Cohen, was a professor of philosophy and the founder and director of the Honors Program at Colorado University. Her Mother, Beatrice Burrus Cohen, was not only a housewife and house mother for students, but was at one time the Assistant Dean of Women at the University as well. During World War II, the family of four moved into a large house on the corner of 11th and Euclid and rented rooms to college students. Jo grew up with her sister Beatrice and they had many happy days playing made up games, pretending to be animals, making bubbles with the ivory soap through the handles of coffee cups as they did the dishes, singing songs and reading poetry as they did their chores. They also played mischievous games on the students that lived in their house. One of my favorite stories was the one where she and her sister decided they had had enough of one of the students who constantly dropped all their possessions all over their room, making it very tedious for them to clean it. They hatched a plan, gathered a hammer and some nails and awaited their moment. As soon as the coast was clear, they proceeded to nail down every item dropped all over the room to the floor. Making a hasty escape, they were all innocence when the dismayed student tried to put on their shoes, only to find them nailed to the floor! Their home was always full of people from all over the country and some from overseas as well. It was like having a great big family. 

Though there was always plenty of work cleaning rooms, washing sheets and towels for the students and helping with the everyday housework, her first job for money was at age 16 at Woolworths during the Christmas Break. Jo was filled with joy to have money to buy gifts for her family for Christmas that year and in turn her Mother surprised her with a gift of her own, her Mother’s lovely desk that Jo had always loved. Jo graduated from Boulder High School in 1950 where she was on the Debate Club and a member of the GAA. 

She then went on to study Psychology and attained her degree in Psychology at the University of Colorado in Boulder. During her student years here she bought her first horse, Cricket. She saved up the money and fulfilled her lifelong wish to own and ride her own horse, despite her parents’ skepticism. 

In College she participated in C Bar U Riders, a horsemanship and social club. While there she worked in the Library. She also worked at Colombia University in the Library from 1952-1953 between her sophomore and junior year in New York and again she experienced the joy of working with people who came from all over. 

She loved drawing and started at a very young age. One day she complained to her Mother about being terribly bored. Her Mother gave her a pen and paper, set her down outside and said, “Draw”. She has been drawing ever since. 

During her first art class at the University, she turned in two drawings of horses to her art professor. Her professor took them with her to a national meeting of art teachers in New York City. They confirmed that Jo’s paintings were exceptional. As one expert put it, “The drawings express in detail, not what Miss Cohen feels, but how it feels to be a horse, or one of a group of odd horses in frolic or stupor, eating, going, plunging, rearing or whatever.” She had her first ever One Artist Show and sold out almost all of her lovely drawings. “All of those horses, “said her Father, “and not one left for the house.” 

After graduating from College, she had her first “real job” for one of her Psychology professors who were researching the effectiveness of a new program for senior medical students at the Medical School in Denver. This meant interviewing students about new patients they had seen that week, symptoms, lab work, History and Physical, and their “impression” of what was causing the patients difficulties. This was the beginning of a working life related in one way or another to medicine. 

In 1957, she arrived in Berkeley, California and went to work in the Department of Biostatistics at the School of Public Health where she had the thrilling job of calculating death rates for an ongoing statistical study based on New York State births and deaths. This revealed the fascinating information that most babies are born on weekends and the fewest on Thursdays! 

Fortunately, the Dept. of Biostatistics was awarded the responsibility of doing a long term study financed by the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, which involved following all of the mothers who had their pregnancies confirmed at Kaiser Oakland, and following their babies, through their medical records for at least 5 years. Eleven years and some 20,000 babies later, the data gather ing part of the study ended and Jo had given up death rates for abstracting and coding Medical Records for Kaiser, supervising the Pediatric data gathering staff. 

In 1960 Jo met her life partner Fran Carver at Kaiser. She became a second Mother to little Rebecca, then around one year old. Fran was also working for Kaiser in the radio isotope lab as a Supervising Medical Technologist. In here around the early 60’s there was a two year time out which involved moving the small family to Minnesota, where Fran grew up, to avoid the threat of a potential missile strike in California. Jo learned a little about insurance companies and about the people who lived in the land of a thousand lakes, back where time began! 

Jo returned to work at Kaiser at her old job when they determined that it was safe to return to California, grateful to return to the cosmopolitan Bay Area. During this time period they raised and showed Airedale Terriers and fell in love with the breed and had many beloved Airedales over the years. 

In 1973, it was time to depart the Bay Area. They determined that the environment in the schools was getting rough and Rebecca was being impacted in a negative way. They decided to get out of the city, and moved up to Placerville to get acquainted with the peace and quiet of “country” life. This meant goats, chickens, skunks, porcupines, horses, sheep and emergencies which were always inconvenient but demanded immediate solutions. An often told family story during this time was the great skunk stand-off. One evening in the dark of night, there was a ruckus in the chicken house down the hill. 

Jo headed out in slippers and pajamas and without a flashlight and ran down the hill. Rebecca and Fran were right behind, and thankfully, Fran had brought a flashlight. Picture two hens squawking their heads off with new little chicks running everywhere, Blue, our Australian Shepard mix, running around outside barking like mad, Meg, the Airedale, with us in the shed… and in the corner, under two little wood stoves, a skunk. The smell was so horrible! The goats in the pen outside the shed were standing around big-eyed, wondering, “What in the world?” As Fran came in the shed door one of the mama hens flew over her head and out the door screeching at the top of her lungs as though to say, “I’ve had it! Babies or no, I’m outta here!” Jo gathered up the little ones, just hatched and not old enough to know what to do or to be afraid, and stuck hem back in the nest under their other mother who had a little more fortitude than her nest mate, and then…. started the great skunk stand off! 

First Jo thought of the shotgun. This was a bad idea! So next was the hose idea…grabbing the hose, she turned it on full blast and let fly at the skunk. A few seconds of this and a rather worried looking skunk appeared at the top of the stoves. It then disappeared underneath, the hose followed, and up popped the skunk on top again, wetter and sorrowful, and looking purely pitiful! In the meantime, Meg was standing in the shed between us and the skunk in the corner, watching this show of force, drooling ropes of saliva from the smell, she decided to solve the problem for us after watching the futility of our efforts. She lay down on her side, reached underneath, grabbed the skunk, pulled it out, gave it a couple of good shakes, and let it go. At last the poor half drowned creature decided that it had definitely had enough, and very slowly, but with great dignity, marched out the door into the goat pen, tail high, with a stream of hose water at its rear helping to reinforce its decision to exit the arena. Triumphant, we all went back to the house full of skunk smell, and tried to live with ourselves. The skunk must have informed his family and friends of this traumatic experience because we had no more skunks for months after that. I share this story as an example of Jo’s humor in all types of situations, her empathy for animals, and her love of a good story. 

After the move to Placerville, of course, this meant a new job. Jo’s three week career at Marshall Hospital ended with a roaring case of bacterial endocarditis, and it wasn’t until 1975 that she went to work at Kaiser in Sacramento as a temporary employee. From there it was on-call, weekend chart prep and Birth Certificate Clerk – then to file clerk, incomplete records desk clerk, statistical clerk and coder. Twenty two years later Jo retired from Kaiser with a grand retirement party…she was amazed at how fast time flew by. 

After retirement, Jo continued her adventures in the country, training her Aussie dog Molly in agility, trapping the exploding barn feral cat population to be neutered/spayed and vaccinated against rabies, brushing and burning, mowing on the riding lawn mower, playing the piano, fostering dogs in need of a forever home, hauling in firewood and enjoying writing in her journals. 

A few years ago, Jo took some of her cards and bookmarks into the Gold Country Artists Gallery in Placerville. She was asking to see if she might be able to sell a bit of her art there at the gallery. A fellow artist recognized her talent and convinced her to bring a selection of her art in to their evaluation committee. She was both excited and anxious as she awaited the decision of the committee. Soon after, she was a valued and well-loved member of the gallery. One of her colleagues told me a story about her ….it was a day at the Gallery like any other…a patron came in and fell in love with one of Jo’s sketches…this was her very first sale of one of her pieces…as she was wrapping it gently for the customer she quietly said, “Well, I’m not sure I really wanted to sell that one…”. She was always so excited when she got a call that one of her lovely art sketches or ink block art sold and she loved working at the gallery and meeting all the different people who came in to explore. 

Jo is survived by her long-time partner, Fran Carver as well as her daughter, Rebecca (Carver) Worcester, her Son-in-Law, Alfred Worcester, her two Grandchildren, Kate and Keegan Worcester, her Nieces, Galen and Rachel Koch. 

Jo was a rare individual who could see into the heart of a person and befriend them in one simple encounter. She was a person with insight and empathy who gave freely of herself and her talents throughout her long and successful life. She was a loving Partner, Mother and Grandmother, was a wonderful cook, a talented musician, artist, and found a keen focus and pleasure in the joys of everyday life. In her last weeks she marveled at the changing vibrant colors of a Chinese Pistachio volunteer tree at the side of the driveway as the leaves changed from yellow to orange to scarlet. She would tell you to enjoy and treasure your family and friends, explore your talents despite your insecurities, leave your troubles at the door when you enter the work world, hard work is its own reward (and it is possible to have fun when you work!) and create your own special place where you can be happy. 

If wanted, donations can be made to Animal Outreach of the Mother Lode, an Animal Rescue service that Jo worked with or any organization that contributes to the Performing or Visual Arts or any other group intended to support the well-being of others. 

A Celebration of Life will be held at the Placerville Shakespeare Club at 2940 Bedford Avenue, Placerville, CA 95667 on November 19th, 2017 at 12:30 p.m. in the afternoon. If you are unable to attend and would like to share a memory or photo or thoughts with the family, please refer to the website www.placervillefuneralandcremation.com for Josephine’s page. 

Please do NOT send flowers to Hall. Flowers should be sent care of Rebecca Worcester at 6520 Wooded Creek Way, Orangevale, CA 95662. Flowers should be delivered no later than November 18th.

When words can't fully express what we want to say, sometimes a small gift can. Visit our Memorial Store for personalized gifts, keepsake jewelry and to plant a memorial tree.

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