Valerie Chernow, 66, Professor Of Languages at City Tech
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Valerie Chernow, a retired professor of languages and social sciences at the New York City College of Technology, died Thursday at 66.
A longtime resident of Brooklyn Heights, she was a familiar figure to many for her work in a number of charitable organizations, including the Bottomless Closet, Learning Leaders, and the International Vocal Arts Institute, a program for young opera singers.
The daughter of a Philadelphia magazine publisher, Chernow grew up in straitened circumstances in Westchester and Long Island after her parents divorced. While attending college at New York University, she spent two years studying abroad in Madrid and at the Sorbonne, and ended up with a lifelong love of languages.
After teaching French and Spanish in the Ardsley school district in Westchester, Chernow was hired to teach languages at the New York City Technical College (as it was then named). She eventually received tenure, although her lack of a Ph.D. meant she never rose above the rank of assistant professor.
At scrappy City Tech, Chernow taught a much wider array of subjects than she might have at a larger institution, including cultural anthropology and human sexuality. (Her master’s degree in sociology from NYU qualified her to lead such classes.) She seemed to relish most the opportunity to work individually with students who faced life challenges, her husband, Ron Chernow, said.
Chernow took early retirement at City Tech and devoted herself in recent years to tutoring students and mentoring charities. She filled her home with sculptures, which were products of her newfound hobby of sculpting in marble and alabaster. She studied sculpture under Philip Pavia. Annual trips with her husband to Spain and France invariably included visits to the homes of locals she met there, new acquaintances impressed by her linguistic acuity and gift for friendship.
“In a town of ambitious strivers, where people assert themselves, her life was a great triumph of the quiet virtues,” Mr. Chernow said. “In a very quiet and self-effacing way, she made herself irresistible.”
Valerie Chernow
Born Valerie Stearn on July 25,1939, in Philadelphia; died January 12 at New York Presbyterian Hospital of ovarian cancer; survived by her husband, Ron Chernow.
