AUGUST 3 • 2023 | 61

son-in-law, Deborah and Dr. 
Andrew Colman; son-in-
law, Dr. Ronald Rasansky; 
grandchildren, Bradley and 
Diana Stoler, Randy Stoler, 
Dr. Michael and Jennifer 
Rasansky, Lisa and Jay Lazar, 
Jodie Colman, and Dr. Brooke 
Colman; great-grandchildren, 
Camellia and Elodie Stoler, 
Lily and Matthew Rasansky, 
and Zoey and Cooper Lazar. 
She is also survived by her 
devoted caregivers, Tajuanna, 
Campbell, Regina, Sil and 
Latrice, her nurse from 
Brighton Hospice Jillian; 
many loving relatives and 
friends.
Mrs. Stoler was the beloved 
wife for 55 years of the 
late Dr. William Stoler; the 
cherished mother of the late 
Cheryl Rasansky; the adoring 
great-grandmother of the late 
Joshua Rasansky; the loving 
sister of the late Sylvia and 
the late Sol Panush, and the 
late Jerry and the late Marilyn 
Loga; the dear sister-in-law 
of the late Sam Stoler, and the 
late Dr. Harry and the late 
Gertrude Stoler; the devoted 
daughter of the late Ida and 
the late John Logan; the loving 
daughter-in-law of the late Joe 
and the late Rose Stoler. 
Interment was at Clover 
Hill Park Cemetery. 
Contributions may be made to 
Zekelman Holocaust Center, 
the Maxine and William 
Stoler Fund for Family 
Research, 28123 Orchard 
Lake Road, Farmington Hills, 
MI 48334, holocaustcenter.
org/tribute; Hebrew Free 
Loan, 6735 Telegraph Road, 
Suite 300, Bloomfield Hills, 
MI 48301, hfldetroit.org; 
Brighton Hospice, 26075 
Woodward Ave., Suite 300, 
Huntington Woods, MI 

48009, brightonhospice.com; 
or to a charity of one’s choice. 
Arrangements by Ira Kaufman 
Chapel.

HELENE WEGIER, 89, of 
Farmington Hills, died July 
22, 2023. 
She is survived by her 
daughters and son-in-law, 
Linda Van Howe (Mel), Susan 
Blunt; grandchildren, Jenny 
Leveille, Laurie Hale (Andy), 
Erin Styron (Andrew), Amelia 
Van Howe (Robert Vargas), 
and Chris Van Howe (Urszula 
Mozurkewich); great-
grandchildren, Charlie, Bailey, 
Callie, Henrik, Cameron and 
Scarlett; many other loving 
family members and friends.
Helene was the beloved 
wife of the late Henry Wegier; 
sister of the late Maurice 
Kassovitch. 
Interment was held at 
the Adat Shalom Memorial 
Park Cemetery in Livonia. 
Contributions may be made to 
the American Cancer Society. 
Arrangements by Dorfman 
Chapel.

OBITUARY 
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Poet and children’s book 
author Mary Ann Hoberman, 
whose own childhood in a 
“very loud, raucous, opin-
ionated” Jewish household in-
spired the family themes that 
infused her books, died on 
July 7 at her home in Green-
wich, Conn. She was 92.
The author of dozens of 
children’s books, including 
The Llama Who Had No Paja-
ma, The Seven Silly Eaters and 
You Read to Me, I’ll Read to 
You, Hoberman was named 
Children’s Poet Laureate by 
the Poetry Foundation, a title 
she held from 2008-2011. 
The theme of family was 
prominent in two of her most 
celebrated books, A House Is 
a House for Me (1978), which 
won a National Book Award, 
and All Kinds of Families! 
(2009), which whimsically 
celebrated what a sociologist 
might call non-traditional 
families. 
“Eggs in a carton can seem 
like a family/ So can a loaf 
with its slices of bread/ Celery 
stalks or a big bunch of car-
rots/ They sleep in the fridge 
with a drawer for a bed,” she 
wrote. 
Born Mary Ann Freedman 
in 1930, Hoberman said her 
family moved frequently 
before her parents “fetched 
up” in New Haven, Con-
necticut. There, she told an 
interviewer, “my mother’s 

mother and her family lived 
and some of my father’s 
family, as well. And some of 
my memories have to do with 
this large extended family. No 
one had very much money. 
They were immigrants. There 
was a great warmth, a lot of 
Yiddish speaking — which 
they kept from me — because 
it was the secret language that 
grownups could communi-
cate with.”
Those memories inspired 
the “very strong love” of 
family that she incorporated 
in many of her books. 
She drew most explicitly on 
her Jewish, Depression-era 
childhood in Strawberry Hill 
(2009), a novel about Allie, 
a 10-year-old girl whose 
family moves to a new town. 
When a friend of a friend 
calls Allie a “dirty Jew,” it 
leads to lessons in difference 
and tolerance. 
In 1951, she married Nor-
man Hoberman, an architect, 
who illustrated her first book, 
All My Shoes Come in Twos 
(1957), based on poems she 
had written for her children. 
Her husband died in 2015; 
one of their sons, Perry, 
would later illustrate some of 
his mother’s books. Hober-
man is survived by Perry and 
three other children, Diane 
Louie, Chuck Hoberman and 
Meg Hoberman; a brother, 
and six grandchildren. 

Mary Ann Hoberman’s Books 
Drew on Her Childhood

JTA

JTA/LEGACY

Mary Ann 
Hoberman