Somers Point’s Charlotte Carney a painter, poet, musician, mother, teacher, journalist … and author of ‘Things I Wanted You to know’
SOMERS POINT — “The secret to life is kindness,” Charlotte Carney said. “Being kind has always been part of who I am.”
The wife and mother of four, who for the time being lives in Somers Point (perhaps permanently?), has lived all over the United States, spreading her brand of kindness from place to place since the 1960s.
Carney is a creator and leaves parts of herself behind wherever she has been — poetry, paintings, songs, championship trophies and, most of all, positive memories for those she has touched.
The thought of one particular project, started 21 years ago for her granddaughters, kept itching at her mind, demanding to be completed.
The Margate native finally got the opportunity to write the final word of her children’s book, “Things I Wanted You to Know,” during the COVID-19 pandemic and recently released it. The 24-page paperback is available for $12.99 at BookBaby.com.
“During COVID I was sitting around and decided to organize it and put it together,” Carney said. “It’s just time to have it published.”
She said she wrote the book for her grandchildren in 2001 to give them a “logical, realistic perspective on life.”
It just needed to be packaged and published.
“Today, my beautiful oldest grandchild is helping me navigate this publishing field. I am so grateful for that and, yes, life is amazing,” Carney said.
“Things I Wanted You to Know” addresses some of the natural curiosities of life that children often have as they start to become their own person. Life can certainly feel overwhelming, but it’s important to remember it is also amazing in so many little ways,” Carney said of her motivation to write the book.
The book is filled with original colorful, painted imagery and positive behavior reinforcement. It encourages children to not only embrace their individuality, but the world and people around them.
The book is dedicated “to children everywhere who hopefully explore and experience how amazing life is.”
It features reproductions of Carney’s acrylic paintings, such as a boy enjoying the outdoors alongside a lake, a little girl stopping to smell the daisies nearby. Another page states “Our universe is awesome!” and features a little girl looking up into the cosmos for inspiration.
It references nature and evolution and advocates for inclusiveness and acceptance.
“Learning about nature helps us understand our place in the universe,” it states. “Happiness is found inside yourself.”
A life on the run
Carney said she and her children — Stacey, Chuck, Jessica and Aaron, who is developmentally delayed — followed husband Charlie around the country as he was promoted or relocated, from Rochester, N.Y., to Houston, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Boston and Buffalo — with many other stops in between.
“He kept me on my toes. He would get promoted and zip along. We’d go somewhere else and I would try to redefine myself,” Carney said.
After growing up on Absecon Island, she attended Philadelphia College Museum of Art while Charlie went to Rutgers University. They then left in the late 1960s when Chuck took his first job in scientific sales and marketing.
“It gave me the opportunity to have many, many careers,” Carney said. “Meet different people, do different things. I developed my art in different ways.”
Carney said she has been involved in the arts in one way or another all of her life, and she used those gifts to become part of the community wherever they found themselves.
Sharing anecdotes of her adventures, she said she was asked to sell hot dogs for a fundraising during the Special Olympics in Houston.
“I said, ‘I’ll tell you what, I’ll write you guys a song and I’ll sit in the booth and play it to you while you sell the hot dogs,’” Carney said. “I brought my guitar down to the stadium and was playing it, then they took me up to the guy in the booth and before you know it, I was down on the field and sang the song and the people stood up and it was awesome.”
She said she was asked to perform during the next event in Austin, and so on.
“It was quite wonderful,” she said, noting she named the song after an autistic son of a friend but that “the words were so relevant to everybody’s handicapped child.”
It discusses the boy quietly building with blocks alone.
“If I could touch your world just once, and see things through your eyes, maybe then I’d know the secret of what keeps you locked inside,” it goes.
“I had a hard time ever singing that song,” she said.
Carney ended up writing another song after they moved to Boston, where the Special Olympics is celebrated due to the Kennedy family’s patronage.
She said she and her band would close the ceremonies with “We’re Winners Today.”
Another musical opportunity came her way when the Special Olympics was held at West Point. After her performance, she was asked to sing on a promotional video the cadets were making for their Special Olympics event.
“I went and recorded it with the boys in the band at West Point,” Carney said.
She said Aaron, who was 12 or 13 at the time, hates public events but really wanted to go because of the U.S. Army cadets.
“They made these kids feel so great,” Charlie chimed in from the next room, noting multiple flyovers and a medals podium among the festivities.
“They played that song and it was an honor for me,” Carney said.
The spirited senior also wrote for The Mariner and other local newspapers in the Boston area, noting she was no good at covering school board meetings but enjoyed feature stories.
“It was such a joy for me to do it,” Carney said.
She recalls smoking cigarettes and typing articles on an electric typewriter.
“Everything was joyous and every opportunity was great,” Carney said.
Saying her daughter Jessica “pushed me into everything that I never wanted to do,” she noted being volunteered to coach softball.
She said her son Chuck, the athlete in the family, and husband tried to help by correcting the girls but she told them to beat it and did it her way.
“I coached a rag-tag group not picked by anybody else and we went undefeated,” Carney said. “We were on the centennial float that year and they offered for me to be the commissioner of baseball but we were moving because Charlie got another job, and off we went to somewhere else.”
She has taught evening classes at colleges all over Pennsylvania and was part of the decorative painting industry, selling paints and brushes to artists and art studios.
In another episode, she sold some of her designs to a fabric house in Manhattan that “whisked me down to SoHo, it was a wonderful experience.”
As a teaching artist, she has taught in the private gallery sector as well as academic arenas in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
In southern New Jersey, Carney taught at the Ventnor Cultural Arts Center for 12 years and at the Ventnor Educational Community Complex for four.
In 2013, she was honored as an artist, teacher and proponent of the arts for adults and children by the New Jersey Shore Arts Association.
She currently teaches children, adults and those with special needs in her home studio in Somers Point.
Locally, her work can be seen on the memorial wall at Gilda’s Club in Linwood, the walls of the children’s section of the Margate Library and the tribute to the Miss American Organization at the Palm restaurant.
Carney said the message she wants to convey is “we all breathe the same air, we all walk on the same streets, we all have the same feelings and we just have to learn to appreciate one another for who they are,” Carney said. “I hope it makes people happy, at least gives kids a grounding.”
By CRAIG D. SCHENCK/Sentinel staff