Laura Regina Levin, the gifted interior designer who used her talents for aesthetics and gastronomy to bring her family and friends together, has died. She was 76.
Levin ran a successful interior design business in New Jersey and expertly managed her husband Don’s psychiatric practice, but her crowning achievement was her family: Jesse, CEO of BetterCloud; Matt, a child psychiatrist; and her four beautiful grandchildren.
Laura Lotka was born on Nov. 15, 1947, the second of eight children from a blue collar household in Delaware County, PA. Her father Bill, an Army veteran who served in the Battle of the Bulge, supported the family by working buildings and grounds at the University of Pennsylvania. She had 12 years of traditional Roman Catholic education, and attended church on Sundays.
As a child in a large family with one shared bathroom, Laura mastered the art of compromise. From a young age, she helped care for her siblings, an experience that would make her a natural mother later in life. She graduated from the Penn School of Dental Hygiene, and briefly worked in dentistry.
In 1968, she met Don. The couple met through a mutual friend, who called in Don, then a young doctor, to give her advice about a bad sunburn.
During their courtship, she earned a bachelor’s degree from Temple University. When Don moved to Chicago for a career in psychiatry, they continued a long-distance relationship, and got engaged in 1969 after watching the live broadcast of the moon landing together. “I thought if we can send a man to the moon, Laura might agree to spend her life with me,” Don said. They spent one of the first years of their life together backpacking around the world, though the trip was cut short when both got Hepatitis A in India.
Initially, the couple settled in the Chicago-area suburb of Evanston, IL, where they spent seven years. Laura gave birth to Jesse and Matt, and earned a master’s degree in social work from the University of Chicago. Later, they moved to Moorestown, NJ, to be closer to family, and Laura created another beautiful home; started her design business; and cultivated many lifelong friendships. When their second son Matt went away to college, they built their dream home in New Hope, PA, and Laura – a true renaissance woman – shifted gears professionally again. First, she worked as a marketer for a geropsychiatric unit, and later, she took over managing Don’s practice, immediately whipping it into shape and turning up hundreds of thousands of dollars in unbilled services rendered.
Eight years ago, the two moved for the last time to Palm Beach Gardens, FL, where Laura enjoyed stretch class, a variety of life-long learning classes, the Miami ballet and her many friends. She will be remembered by her loved ones as a woman who valued kindness above all and passed her compassion on to her children and grandchildren, her living legacy.
