Lawrence, Irene G.

Her parents, George and Vera Cherepowich, were Russian immigrants who had left Russia before the Russian Revolution, George from a village near Vilnius, Lithuania, although he was an ethnic Russian, and Vera from Minsk in Belarus. She was also predeceased by her older and much loved brother, Nicholas Gregory.

Irene’s first language was Russian and her first four years of education were at a Russian School, The Russian Consolidated Mutual Aid Society of America whose stated objective was to duplicate the public school course in Russia. After graduating, she learned English and entered the New York City public school system. She graduated from Hunter College with a Bachelor of Arts in 1949 and went on to The Bank Street College of Education receiving a Master of Science in Education. Between her undergraduate and graduate work she met and married Howard Levy, later Lawrence, and gave birth to two children, Michael Lawrence in 1952 and Daniel Lawrence in 1958.

After finishing her graduate work, she began a career in education dedicated to the welfare of children. She worked as a kindergarten teacher first in Bloomfield, New Jersey and later in the Rockaway Township school system. During the Kennedy Administration, and after she had divorced Howard Lawrence and was raising two children as a single parent, she won a fellowship that allowed her to stop teaching and devote herself to studies at Montclair University. She graduated in 1969 with a second Masters in School Psychology.

She worked on the Child Study Team in the Morristown school system from 1970 until retirement and received great satisfaction and worked tirelessly to insure the welfare of children in Morristown, New Jersey.

After retirement, Irene indulged a passion that had been lying semi dormant inside her for her entire life: she travelled extensively throughout Europe, Asia and the Indian subcontinent. She was particularly proud of spending close to a year in 1992 teaching English in Moscow and living in the home of a Russian Physician. Within a year after an aortic valve replacement surgery she travelled to China and was literally a thousand miles from any hospital that could help her if her heart surgery went bad.

She travelled to Russia many times even journeying to the village that her father was from with the idea of finding relatives lost since the Soviets had come to power. Unfortunately, the village was in the direct line of the German advance into Russia during the Second World War.

Survivors include her sons Daniel Lawrence and his wife Martha, and Michael Lawrence and his wife Kathy and Irene’s grandson Joshua. She is also survived by her brother Nicholas’ children, Maura and Paul Gregory and Nicholas’ wife Maura.

Arrangements are under the direction of the Iliff-Ruggiero Funeral Home 156 Main St. (Rt. 206) Newton, NJ.