Gloria G. Kempner, a retired school teacher for the Roslyn Public Schools and longtime resident of Roslyn Heights, Shelter Island and Port Washington, died on Thursday, Feb. 19 at the North Shore-LIU Hospice Inn at Melville. She was 86.
Gloria was born in New York City to Hildred and Michael Gioscia on April 15, 1928. She attended New York City Public Schools, graduating from William Howard Taft High School in 1945, and graduated from Hunter College in 1949. She married her late husband, David G. Kempner, in November 1949, while she taught in the New York City Public School system. They lived in Jackson Heights until 1954, when they moved to Roslyn Heights, after the birth of their son, CDR William Kempner, NYNM/USN Ret. Their daughter Donna was born in 1958.
She returned to the classroom in 1960 and taught second and third grades for the next 25 years in the Roslyn Public Schools. She loved being a classroom teacher and her first class to graduate from Roslyn was the class her son was also in. She attended the LIU CW Post Center’s Palmer School of Library Science and received her first master’s degree in library science, and a second master’s degree in counseling. She retired from the classroom in 1985 to spend more time with her husband, who died in 1987.
She worked as a volunteer at the Congregational Church of Manhasset, where she was a member for many years, and also served as a docent at the American Merchant Marine Museum at the US Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point for a number of years. She was a very popular docent, and she attributed it to the fact that she was a long-time educator, and that “My husband was a sailor in World War II, and my son is a sailor now!”
In 1990, she was introduced through friends to Don Wilmot of Shelter Island, and they kept company on Shelter Island for the next eleven years, until Wilmot passed away in late 2001. In 2002, Gloria relocated to Port Washington where she thoroughly enjoyed her friends and neighbors, as well as visits from her grandson David. She loved to travel, visiting her son and daughter-in-law five times in the three years they were stationed in England, and taking numerous side trips all over the US and Europe, to Russia and to Australia. She loved to attend the Metropolitan Opera and the New York City Ballet, as well as the programs at the Tilles Center. She also became a member of Trinity Episcopal Church of Roslyn.
In addition to her son Bill and daughter-in-law Diane of Roslyn Heights, she is survived by her daughter Donna and son-in-law Juan Kong of San Francisco, CA, her grandson David Kempner and Carlos Kong, her granddaughter Maria Kong, her brother Bob Gioscia and sister-in-law Ann, brother-in-law Robert Gottheimer, sister-in-law Alice Kempner, and many loving nieces and nephews, and “family of the heart.”
The family asks that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the North Shore-LIJ Hospice Inn or to the Mashomack Preserve of the Nature Conservancy on Shelter Island.
Funeral arrangements entrusted to Roslyn Heights Funeral Home.
