Welcome to
Beverly Shirley Kerness Unger's Monument
UNGER, Beverly Shirley Kerness, 98, of Westbury, New York, Salt Spring Island and Victoria, British Columbia, La Jolla, California and Portland, Oregon, devoted and beloved wife of Robert (Bob) Samuel Unger for 63 years and loving mother of Jane Unger, Martha Rothstein, Thomas Unger and Sally Unger. Born June 13, 1924 and died April 1, 2023. Dubbed “Bevy Bubbles” in her youth, her effervescent personality continued to justify that moniker.
Growing up in Fall River, Massachusetts to Sara and Morris Kerness, both immigrants from Kiev, Beverly was the only one of four daughters to finish college when she graduated from Simmons College in 1944. She also earned a Master’s degree in social work at Columbia University. She worked as a social worker for the Red Cross and the Jewish Board of Family and Child Services before earning certification to practice as a psychiatric social worker.
Resourcefulness could have been her middle name. She co-founded the Westbury Co-Op Nursery School when she couldn’t find one to her liking for her first-born. Pioneer could have been another middle name. She and her husband emigrated to Salt Spring Island in B.C., Canada in 1977 where she literally turned apples into apple cider when she helped create Phoenix Orchards. She helped found the Core Inn on Salt Spring, a non-profit center that provides child and family services.
Bev and Bob spent many winters in La Jolla to escape the Pacific Northwest weather. After moving to Victoria, she supported the Victoria Symphony and its music composition program for youth. The symphony dedicated its April 15 concert to her. Her support of the symphony and other community organizations resulted in her receiving a Valued Elder Recognition Award in 2020 from the Institute on Aging and Lifelong Health in Victoria. A true lover of all the arts and literature, she belonged to multiple book groups wherever she lived and attended the symphony, opera, and theatre until the end of her days.
Bev and Bob loved travel and made friends wherever they went. She leaves behind dear friends of all ages and nations. She was preceded in death by Bob and her four siblings. She is survived by her four children, eight grandchildren, and three great grandchildren.
In lieu of flowers the family requests that donations be made to the Victoria Symphony, the Beverly Kerness Unger Scholarship Fund (c/o Trustees of FR HS Alumni Scholarships, PO Box 2519, Fall River, MA, 02722-2519), or the Salt Spring Island Foundation’s Unger Family Fund for Children and Their Mothers and Senior Women in Need. “And death shall have no dominion.”
Bev in Victoria in 2019
Bev with family at her 95th birthday party
Bev with her grandchildren at a family vacation in 2016
Bev and Marion Poliakoff, college roommates!
Bev at her condo in Portland in 2018
Bev with her grandchildren at her 95th birthday celebration
Bev with 2 of her great-grandchildren in 2022
Bev at granddaughter Jessica's wedding in 2014
Remembrances - Add A Remembrance
Julia Baldwin added this:
When Death Comes by Mary Oliver
When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox;
when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: What is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth, tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth.
When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
I think we can all say that Bev did not merely visit this world. Bev, the legend, the force, the disrupter, made an impact, and friends, wherever she went.
As a kid, I have to admit, having Bev as my grandmother was pretty intimidating and scary, at times. It was hard to keep up with her in terms of the sheer amount of activities she would pack into a day, the socializing she would do, and the curiosity and energy she brought to absolutely everything she did.
When I think about my Grandmother, I'm also flooded with memories of the little things. Her making mickey mouse pancakes when I spent the summer up on Salt Spring. Her clipping out articles on whatever was relevant to me at the time — most recently, New Zealand. Her always making sure there were kiwis for me when I visited.
She taught me how to be a host and to always be ready for someone dropping by with a full fridge. She shared with me her love of travel. She looked at the world with a curious, whimsical, and iconoclastic perspective and I hope that lives on in me.
There are big and small ways I hope to carry her with me, and I hope others do the same. Her passion, her energy, and her warmth are just a few. And, I'll strive to always have my nails done and order my salmon to be cooked so it glistens, in her honor.