Geraldine Shohet
September 8, 1935 - July 26, 2023
Geraldine Poplack Shohet, loving wife, mother, and adored “Bubbie” to her twelve grandchildren, died peacefully at her home in San Francisco, California, on Wednesday, July 26, 2023.
The eldest child of Helen (Landau) and Sam Poplack, Gerrie grew up with her brothers Bill and David and sister Phyllis in Taunton, Massachusetts. She attended Radcliffe College, graduating in 1956.
She met her husband when her freshman roommate at Radcliffe introduced Gerrie to her cousin Stephen. They were married the summer after graduation and were inseparable companions for the next 68 years.
Their life together was rich. They travelled widely, ate heartily and entertained frequently. In 1971, the family moved from Massachusetts to San Francisco and within a short time Gerrie had made the City her own. Active in the Radcliffe Club, Gerrie was an enthusiastic City booster and tour-guide to legion visitors, family and friends who discovered the City through her eyes.
She was “the hostess with the mostess”: dinner was always delicious, and everyone was always welcome. Two more for seder? No problem. Three more at the last minute? Wonderful, even though the table might have strained to accommodate. And not just for dinner either. Gerrie routinely brought into the family--for days or even weeks at a time--distant relatives, her children’s friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, and foreign visitors, all of whom were touched by her warmth, her generosity, her splendid intelligence, her wit, her sincerity, and her charm.
In 1999 Gerrie and Stephen bought a country property in Normandy, and for the next 20 years spent parts of every spring or fall in France, where Gerrie nurtured a community of friends and neighbors for whom “chère Geraldine” became synonymous with lively conversation and calvados on the terrace at 4:00. When they could, their grandchildren accompanied their grandparents on day trips to the next little town and the next good restaurant, where Gerrie could always be lured by the promise of the next great chocolate pot-de-creme.
And for almost her entire married life, Gerrie presided over the family’s intervals in her beloved Cape Cod, stopping on the way from Logan Airport for tongue sandwiches, cooking up fish chowder, solving the New York Times crossword puzzle, playing two or three (friendly) games of scrabble a day, illicitly feeding the dogs from the table, and making welcome (and keeping track of) the dozens of east-coast relatives, old friends, new friends, children’s and grandchildren’s friends who came for the ocean and stayed for dessert. She made sure that hot fudge sauce (page 613 of the New York Times Cookbook) was never in short supply. Her blueberry pie was legendary.
She is survived by her husband of 67 years, Stephen Shohet; her four children: Ralph (Julie), Grace (David Brownstein), Jason (Ellen) and Juliet Fleischmann (Sam); and her 12 grandchildren: Melissa, Raphael, and Sonia Shohet; Daniel, Isaiah, and Helen Brownstein; Adam, Renee, and Amy Shohet; and Charles, Ben, and Will Fleischmann.