CHOROVER, BEATRICE Aug 13, 1931 - Dec 11, 2020

Beatrice (Bea) Chorover passed away peacefully in her sleep on Friday, Dec 11, 2020, at 89 years old at Rogerson House in Jamaica Plain, MA.

Bea was a family therapist and social worker with a career spanning nearly 50 years. After receiving a BA in Anthropology from Queens College NY (1953) and a Masters in Social Work from New York University (1955), she worked with many individuals, families, couples and children during her employment at mental health centers as well as through her private practice and her mentorship of early career therapists. Beginning with children and adolescents in 1950s New York, she later trained in California and then practiced for 13 years at Dedham Family Services before spending the next 20 years of her career at the Brookline Mental Health Clinic, teaching, leading group therapy and practicing the newer discipline of systems and family therapy. Following her retirement from the Brookline Clinic, Bea maintained a home-based private therapy practice into her early eighties.

Bea (nee Feinstein) lost her mother at an early age and lived for almost ten years in a Lutheran orphanage on a farm in upstate NY. As she entered adolescence, her father remarried and reunited the family for a move to "The Coops", a worker's apartment cooperative in the Bronx, where Bea was steeped in the values of community and social justice. Those years and her young adult life in NYC were happy and formative times; she always remembered The Coops with great fondness, and her acquaintances from that period became lifelong friends.

In 1952, Bea married Stephan L Chorover, who had also been born and raised in the Bronx. When Stephan joined the faculty of MIT in 1961, their growing family settled in Brookline. The two remained together for 63 years until Stephan's death in 2015.Many good times, legendary dinners and rowdy parties were enjoyed in their home in Brookline and later in Jamaica Plain. The summer home they created together on Mount Desert Island, Maine was likewise beautiful, comfortable, cozy, inviting, and full of art, including several of Bea's own beautiful oil paintings.

Bea is loved for her warmth, humor and dedication to her family, friends, and community. She is also remembered fondly for her keen sense of irony and easy laugh.

Bea is survived by her three children, Nora (Little Compton, RI, partner Steve Cooley), Jon (Tucson, AZ, wife Gina) and Katya (Boulder, CO, husband John Grandt) and her four beloved grandchildren, Talia Chorover (Baltimore, MD), Nate Chorover (London, UK), Sarah Weingust (London, UK) and Annaluna Grandt (Boulder, CO). Her family plans to host a celebration of Bea's life at some point in the next year, when gathering is safer.

Please use this space to share memories, thoughts and celebrations about Bea here.

In lieu of flowers, we invite you to send donations in Bea's name to: Rosie's Place, Doctors Without Borders, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the American Friends Service Committee.