Carol Sue Woolley, née Hageman, formerly Rapaport, was born June 15, 1938, in Newark and sadly died Sept. 4, 2022, in Waretown. She, her parents Walter and Helen Hageman, and her brother Wally Hageman, lived in Orange and then Sea Bright. She attended Orange High School and obtained a bachelor’s degree from Montclair College and a master’s degree from Georgian Court University.
Carol was a dedicated grammar school teacher for 30 years in Orange, Glen Gardner, and Rumson, and retired from Knollwood School in Fair Haven. She was a leader, a humanitarian, and an advocate. She touched and influenced the lives of her students, her family and her communities. She founded the Youth Center in Glen Gardener and was the president of her Unitarian Universalist Church. She dedicated her life to helping people and communities achieve their full potential and greatness.
She made every day special for her family. She wrote to her daughters, “Being your mother claimed my heart ever since I fell in love with each of you when I felt your life and my immortality inside me.” She was adventurous, committed to life-long learning, an avid reader, was politically astute, and loved to garden, design interiors, make clothes, crafts, paint with watercolors, sing, go to the beach, the racetrack, and travel, especially to Ireland. She was devoted to her family, friends, and dogs, especially Pepper, Kiri and Fritz.
She leaves behind her daughters, Mandy Rapaport and Liza Martin and her husband Bill Flesche; her brother Walter Hageman; her two grandchildren, Sean and Evan Martin, and Brian and Maggie Flesche; Nicole and Corbin Gohlmann, Caitlyn Goebel and Emily Walsack; her great-grandchildren, Abigail, Katherine and Henry Flesche; her nephew Gabe and Pam; her extended family, Diane and Scott Hood, Barbara Barry who cared for her with the deepest of compassion, and many special and adored friends.
Her family will hold a private memorial service at a later date. Memories, condolences, and in lieu of flowers, donations to the Alzheimer’s Association, can be shared on her site at everloved.com/life-of/carol-woolley.
The article originally appeared in the September 22 – 28, 2022 print edition of The Two River Times.
