Donna Lazartic, Varda Yoran, Judy Wittler and Sharon Huber
WEST ORANGE, NJ — A luncheon was held Wednesday, Oct. 10, at Green Hill Senior Living in West Orange for Varda Yoran and the Rose Art Foundation in recognition of their donation of five deluxe Invacare Recliners. The Rose Art Foundation is a family, nonprofit organization with a mission to serve persons with mobility challenges in need.
The Rose Art Foundation was founded in memory of the tremendous life, contribution and drive of family patriarch Shalom Yoran, a Polish Jew who survived WWII fighting with the partisans against the Nazis. His memoir “The Defiant: A True Story of Escape, Survival & Resistance” was published in 1996 by St. Martin’s Press. Shalom Yoran immigrated to Palestine in 1946 and joined the Israeli air force in 1948, where he began his 22-year career in the aerospace industry.
Varda Yoran was born in China in 1929 to Jewish parents who emigrated from Russia in the days before WWII. She witnessed the Japanese occupation of China, and the communist takeover before her family moved to Palestine. Varda Yoran lived in Israel during the declaration of Israel’s independence, and it is there that she met and married Shalom Yoran and had two daughters. In 1978 the family emigrated to the United States.
In his later years, when Shalom Yoran became infirm, his wife searched the internet for a comfortable wheelchair that would enable her husband to remain mobile instead of confined to a bed. The Invacare Recliner enhanced her husband’s quality of life significantly and enabled him to continue to engage with his family and community. So impressed was she with the difference the Invacare chair made in their lives that, after his death, the Rose Art Foundation was established by the family “to improve the quality of life of immobile and handicapped seniors, predominantly in nonprofit nursing homes” through the donation of Invacare Recliner chairs. To date more than 600 chairs have been donated across the country. The Rose Art Foundation continues to solicit for funds to further its mission. For more about the Rose Art Foundation, Living With Dignity, or to donate, visit http://www.livingwithdignity.org.
Photos Courtesy of Amy Simon
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