Gail Cohen Taylor passed away unexpectedly on July 23, 2021.She was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on June 11, 1940 to Louis D. Cohen and Salome Miller Cohen. She grew up in Cincinnati, New York City, and St. Louis, Missouri. One of her high school friends said Gail was the smartest person she knew. She attended and graduated from Barnard College in New York City.
Gail was the mother of two sons who she raised as a single mom, while working at a challenging job at the Indianapolis Welfare Department and also co-founding an innovative school in Indianapolis. When she remarried in 1979 she became stepmother of two daughers. Gail and her husband Al Taylor lived in the Champaign-Urbana, Illinois area for almost 40 years.
She worked as an editor at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and at the Illinois State Water Survey. At the age of 49 Gail went back to school and received a Master of Social Work degree from the University of Illinois. She then worked as a therapist in the adolescent mental health unit at United Samaritans Medical Center in Danville, Illinois. When they retired in 2007, she and Al moved to Camas, Washington to be near their sons and grandchildren in Portland, Oregon.
Gail loved music and sang and played the piano well. She and Al took lessons and enjoyed ballroom dancing. She enjoyed gardening and tending to her flowers and plants and was an avid hiker,