Arthur Leslie Arrison
Arthur L. Arrison, a pioneer Christmas tree farmer in Princeton and Newtown, Pa., went home to be with his heavenly father on July 12, 2021. Arthur battled COPD and heart complications with loving care in Lake Placid, N.Y., for many years.
Arthur was born in Trenton, N.J., on February 6, 1956 to Carl and Kay Phillips. He had a twin brother, Philip; a brother, Carl; two sisters, Diann and Brenda; and many nieces and nephews. He married his sweetheart, Dena, in 1985 and was a proud and loving father to his two sons, Christopher and James. He had a daughter, Nicolette Danielle Arrison, by a prior marriage in St. Louis, Mo.
Arthur proudly joined the U.S. Army, where he excelled highly for six years and was discharged with honors after serving in Korea and North Carolina. He returned home and married Dena, and they purchased a 21-acre farm from the Reed family at 4200 Mercer Road in Princeton. The family planted thousands of tree seedlings in the barren fields, and started a Christmas tree farm consisting of spruce, pine, fir, and hemlocks. Arthur believed in farm preservation to fight climate change, and maintained beautiful open space to save the farm from any future development of condos, townhouses, or apartments. Arthur will be remembered as being a steward of land and often said, “Leave no farm behind.”
Arthur was very generous to the Princeton community, and gave back by saving trees, caring for trees and shrubs, and also planting hundreds of spruce and pine trees in Princeton neighborhoods for 27 years. In addition, he started a firewood business in the winter months — he recycled wood by removing diseased or dead large oak trees on the farm and worked hard all year long in order to prepare for winter sales of firewood to the Nassau Inn and neighbors with his two sons and a beagle named Mason. Recycling the wood was a way to avoid turning it into mulch, and to keep Princeton fireplaces toasty during the holidays.
In the summer months on the farm he planned and planted a huge vegetable garden with his sons. He also taught them how to farm crops and care for the farm for a self-sustainable way of life. He purchased seedlings every year, fixed barn windows and floorboards, grew hay, fixed tractors, and worked long days, sunrise to sunset.
Arthur’s final wishes were to preserve the Princeton farm forever from more Mercer County development and New Jersey sprawl.
Arthur was a member of the Washington Crossing United Methodist Church, where he tirelessly worked on many events and volunteered for many church suppers. He was very generous at Christmastime by donating trees to local town halls, city halls, and Princeton neighbors and businesses.
Arthur also loved their home on Cape Cod, finding his serenity on the ocean while deep sea fishing with his sons, and canoeing and hiking in the Saranac region of the Adirondack Mountains.
Arthur was laid to rest in Washington Crossing Veterans Cemetery on August 2, 2021, and will be missed by Dena, his children, grandchildren, family, and friends.
Memorial donations may be sent to Isles Inc., Resource Development Department, Attn. Patricia Walker, 10 Wood Street, Trenton, NJ 08618.
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James Leonard Groom
Local architect James Leonard Groom, known to all as Len, recently passed away in Kenmore, WA, at the age of 87.
Born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1933, Len moved to Princeton with his parents and elder sister Estella as a pre-teen. He attended Princeton public schools and then Princeton University (Class of 1955), where he was an enthusiastic participant in track and field, lover of classical music and opera, and student of art and architecture.
He attained his bachelor’s and master’s in architecture from Princeton and Columbia. Following a stint in the Army and a year of European travel, Len and his wife, Anne, and young daughters, Lisa and Martha, returned to Princeton for what would be Len’s long career with local architecture firms, most notably The Hillier Group.
He played leadership roles on a number of major projects, including dormitories at Rutgers University, Ramapo College, and Fordham University. After the enormous satisfaction of completing the Merritt Tower skyscraper in Baltimore, he declared that he could never go back to designing “squatty little buildings.” He capped his career with the exuberant New Jersey State Aquarium in Camden and the headquarters of GlaxoSmithKline in London — now a familiar landmark on the route to Heathrow Airport. His coworkers fondly recall his astute mentoring and creativity, and teased him about his perpetually scrounging for change for the office Coke machine.
Bright, curious, and open-minded, Len enjoyed good conversation, Monty Python, and the New York Mets. An inveterate traveler, Len and Anne made many trips to Europe and especially enjoyed train travel and cruises. Len also amused himself by painting detailed digital portraits that placed the beloved faces of family members into old master paintings, with such finesse that his grandchildren are continually surprised when they encounter the originals.
Len is survived by his wife, his two daughters, and their spouses and children, along with his sister, two nieces and two nephews, and their spouses and families.
His modern house on Cedar Lane in Princeton, imaginatively designed and largely constructed by him, still stands and remains in the family.
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Memorial Service
Trudy Glucksberg
On Sunday, November 7 (postponed from September 19), from 2-5 p.m., the Arts Council of Princeton will host a memorial service celebrating the life of Trudy Glucksberg.
Trudy was an artist by profession and passion, and a gifted and gracious connector of people. She was a beloved member of the Arts Council family, serving as a dedicated front desk volunteer, attending weekly Open Drawing Workshops, displaying her work in the popular “Concentric Circles” exhibition, and annually submitting work to our Members Exhibition. Her art has graced many book covers, has been exhibited in numerous galleries, and hangs in homes and corporate collections across the world.
This memorial will be hosted by Trudy’s family and open to all who would like to celebrate her incredible life.
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Margarete Leah Linton
Margarete “Leah” (Deutch) Linton fled Nazi-controlled Austria as a young teenager, broke female stereotypes working men’s jobs in her 20s, helped start a kibbutz in Israel, and became a beloved nursery teacher for decades in the Trenton, NJ, area. She passed on Tuesday, September 7, 2021 in Southbury, CT, after a courageous battle with cancer. She had just turned 96, and to the very end, she maintained her legendary and contagious sense of humor.
While universally seen as a strong, loving, and supportive wife, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, she remained a trailblazer, a community pillar and inspiration to all whose lives she touched. According to Jewish tradition, her passing on the High Holy Day of Rosh Hashanah deems her a “tzadik,” or “person of great righteousness,” which she indeed was throughout her storied life.
Having escaped Vienna, Austria, with her mother for the United States as a young teen in 1939 and having lost many family members, including her father, in the Holocaust, those experiences shaped her self-prescribed mission: to bring the phrase “Never Forget,” to life and spend a lifetime educating citizens about the dangers of hate. Thus, she freely shared her experiences in person and online about the dislocations and terror she experienced as a young girl with thousands of students in Connecticut and elsewhere, as well as providing an oral history to the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and speaking to the Connecticut State Legislature on Holocaust Remembrance Day at the request of the Governor.
In 2017 at age 91, Leah and her daughter, Leslie Linton, celebrated a joint bat mitzvah at B’Nai Israel in Southbury, where she was an active congregant, the first bat mitzvah for both of them. “Thirteen represented a terrible time in my life, in our world,” she said during her bat mitzvah speech. “I am here today for the millions of girls who were killed during those years and were never able to even dream of a bat mitzvah.”
Yet despite the trauma she experienced, Leah was incredibly optimistic and funny, an inveterate joke teller with a quick wit that was never used to denigrate anyone but herself.
As a former resident of Lawrence Township, NJ, Leah was the favorite nursery schoolteacher of thousands of children who attended Herzl Zion Hebrew School in Trenton (later the Abrams Hebrew Academy in Yardley, PA) and to the end she maintained connections with many of her students, who are now in their 60s and 70s.
Leah and her husband Ted, upon his retirement from Princeton Plasma Labs, moved to Los Alamos, NM, where he continued work on scientific projects. They later returned to settle in Southbury, ultimately to the Watermark retirement community. After Ted passed in 2006, Leah became an even more active member of that community, where she was universally loved and acted as an unofficial mayor and ambassador for prospective residents. She also founded a writer’s circle, another passion of hers, and loved her time participating in drum circles and other activities.
Leah was a believer in the independence of women. “I have always had strong views on women’s equality,” she also said in her bat mitzvah speech, noting that as a young woman, “I went out of my way to prove women can do anything men can do.” So it made perfect sense that Leah pushed the envelope for women, whether as the first woman upholsterer in a New York upholsterer’s local union or the first woman hired as a tree trimmer at the Bronx Botanical Gardens. Even before these jobs, she was a founding member of Kibbutz Sasa in Upper Galilee, Israel.
Leah will be deeply missed by her children, David (Hope) Linton of Lawrenceville and Leslie Linton (Bruce) of Colts Neck, N.J.; grandchildren Jaime Bunn (Matt), Adam Whitten, Josh Linton, and Dana Whitten; and great-grandchildren Tyler and Zachary Bunn. Leah is predeceased by her loving husband, Ted Linton.
Memorial contributions can be made to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation or the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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Harold Corbusier Knox
Harold Corbusier Knox of Tucson, AZ, died on September 5, 2021 in Tucson due to complications from kidney cancer. Hal grew up in Princeton, NJ, and was the son on Nancy and Gordon Knox of Princeton and Santa Fe, NM.
Born on September 1, 1946, Hal graduated from Princeton Country Day, the Darrow School, the University of Arizona, and Potomac School of Law.
For many years, Hal served as a United States National Park Service Ranger in Washington, DC, and then joined the federal Bureau of Land Management as a Real Estate Specialist in New Mexico. Upon retirement, he moved to Tucson. Hal had an ardent interest in the outdoor and conservation issues. He spent many years volunteering at the Sabino Canyon Recreation Area in Tucson as well as with other local charities. An accomplished creative writer, several of Hal’s poems were published in magazines and he also wrote a screenplay.
Hal is survived by his twin brother Tom Knox and his wife, Jill, of Tucson, and his brother Toby Knox and his wife, Kathryn, of South Burlington, VT, and many beloved nieces and nephews. His parents and sisters, Emily Corbusier Knox and Cynthia Knox Watts, are deceased.
Donations in Hal’s memory can be sent to the Arizona chapter of The Nature Conservancy, Tucson Conservation Center, 1510 E. Fort Lowell Rd, Tucson, AZ 85719. A gathering of family and friends will be held at a future date.
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Jerry Grundfest
June 12, 1930 – Sept. 5, 2021
Jerry Grundfest, 91, died suddenly on Sept. 5, 2021. He was a resident of Somerset, NJ, since 1966.
Born in Brooklyn, NY, he spent his high school years in Phoenix, AZ, and then received his BA in History from Stanford University, and an MBA and Ph.D. from Columbia University (also History).
His career in arts and historical organizations included the Philadelphia Bicentennial Commission and the Hall of Fame for Great Americans. In his later years he was a real estate agent for several firms in Princeton, NJ. He was a member of the Princeton Historical Society, where he led historical tours of Princeton. A lifelong lover of the arts, he subscribed to many cultural institutions — opera, symphony, ballet, theater — in New York, New Jersey, and Tanglewood, MA.
He is survived by Sandra, his beloved wife of 66 years; his daughter Leslie (Ricardo Siboldi) of Piscataway, NJ; his son Robert (Colleen) of Warren, NJ; and grandchildren Elizabeth Siboldi, Joshua Grundfest, and Abigail Grundfest.
He is pre-deceased by his sister, Rhoda Sigman, and survived by a niece, Isabel Stevens, and nephews Alan and Jonathan Sigman.
A graveside service was held on Thursday, September 9 at Mount Lebanon Cemetery in Woodbridge, NJ.
Donations in his memory may be made to Anshe Emeth Memorial Temple or an organization of your choice.
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Nancy M. Kramer
Elizabeth (Nancy) Ann MacNeil Kramer passed away peacefully September 6, 2021 at the age of 90 in Essex, Connecticut.
Nancy was born in Forest Hills, New York, on November 8,1930 to Elizabeth Quinn MacNeil and Neil MacNeil. She enjoyed much of her life in New York, New Jersey, and Vermont surrounded by her family and friends.
Nancy studied at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. and Barnard College in New York City. While in college in New York City she met her husband Jack Kramer. They were happily married for 52 years. She was an accomplished painter, gardener, and bridge player. Nancy had a vibrant social life and was well-known by her friends and family for her welcoming and loving nature.
Nancy is survived by her two children, W. Jeffrey Kramer and Elizabeth Whitney; and three grandchildren, Hunter, Kathryn, and John Kramer. Nancy was predeceased by her son John MacNeil Kramer, her sister Maryrose Cumbaugh, her brother Neil MacNeil, and her husband John Stanley Kramer.
A funeral service was held on Friday, September 10, 2021 at Mather-Hodge Funeral Home, 40 Vandeventer Avenue, Princeton, NJ. Burial was in Trinity-All Saints’ Cemetery.
In lieu of flowers, please consider making a donation to the Parkinson’s Foundation.