Merrie Lou Cohen
Merrie Lou Cohen, of Swarthmore, died peacefully at home on March 5, having achieved her ambition of living to see a Democrat back in the White House. She was 95.
Bloop, as she was known to family and friends, was born in Brady Lake, Ohio, in 1925. According to family lore, when her father took his first look at his infant daughter, he declared, “That’s not a baby — that’s a Bloop!” and the nickname stuck. Growing up in a military family, Bloop attended a dozen different schools as the family moved around the country. She met her future husband, Hennig Cohen, in South Carolina, and they married soon after he returned from serving in World War II. Bloop and Hennig were world travelers. For an extended period in the 1980s, they lived in London and Kyoto, where Hennig taught American literature at local universities.
Bloop was an insatiable reader. As a child, she once was so engrossed in the book she was reading that she walked straight into Brady Lake. She successfully built a career around books while also raising three sons. She earned a master’s in library science, then worked for many years as the Swarthmore Elementary School librarian. Bloop was the opposite of the stereotypical stern librarian. She believed that reading should be fun and unstructured. Her “let kids be kids” approach, and her role as a determined union representative, sometimes sparked the ire of school officials. But her students loved her. For the rest of her life, former pupils would stop her on the street to share fond memories of listening to her read aloud.
This deep love of literature was part of Bloop’s broader passion for art. As she traveled the world, she visited innumerable craft shows, flea markets, museums, and architectural sites. While she admired many professional works, she also saw the artistic potential in every button and scrap of paper. She sculpted, sewed, beaded, cut, glued, painted, and doodled prodigiously. Her visiting grandchildren were delighted to be given free rein of her overstuffed crafting room, and she carefully preserved decades worth of their scribbles.
She was a woman of sharp wit and many enthusiasms – art, history, antiques – collecting everything from miniature doll chairs to Art Deco pottery. A sporting woman, she avidly followed Manchester United and engaged in a daily wrestling match with the New York Times crossword puzzle. But most of all she read. She devoured library books at such a fast and furious pace that she found it necessary to track them so that she wouldn’t read the same book twice, etching a tiny, secret pencil mark in every one. She attributed her longevity to two things: her appetite for literature and her nightly Dove ice cream bar.
Bloop was predeceased by her husband, Hennig Cohen. She leaves three sons and their wives, David and Claudia of Charleston, South Carolina, Mark and Margaret of Boston, Massachusetts, and Jon and Mary of Swarthmore; seven grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
She didn’t like a fuss, so no memorial ceremony is planned. In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to the Swarthmore Public Library.
