Louise Stephanie Goldberg

Louise Stephanie Goldberg, a retired Brooklyn elementary school teacher who spent nearly five decades in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, died on September 25, 2026, at the Whitestone Care Center in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. She was 91. Her death was announced through an obituary published by the Bolock Funeral Home and Crematory in Cresco, Pennsylvania, which described her as passing away peacefully.

Born on June 7, 1935, in Brooklyn, New York, she was the daughter of Leroy and Betty Klapper. She graduated from Brooklyn College and went on to build a long career in elementary education, beginning at a local yeshiva school before spending the bulk of her working life teaching children at P.S. 29 John M. Harrigan in Brooklyn. Generations of students in that Brooklyn neighborhood passed through her classroom, and her family's tribute to her singled out that career as central to who she was.

In 1978, she and her husband, Leonard Lenny Goldberg, left New York City and settled in Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania, in the Pocono region, where they raised their family and put down new roots. She became an active member of the A Pocono Country Place Senior Club, a social hub for retirees in the area, and was known there as a warm and sociable presence. She and her husband traveled widely around the United States together, visiting national landmarks and reconnecting with old friends along the way. Closer to home, she was an enthusiastic mahjong player who enjoyed the game's strategy and camaraderie, and she remained a devoted, lifelong fan of the New York Mets.

Her husband, Lenny, and her son, Mark Kaplan, died before her, and her obituary noted that she was reunited with them in death. She is survived by her daughter, Karen S. Kaplan Planchock, her former son-in-law Stephen Planchock, her daughter-in-law Nadine Steen Kaplan, her brother Richard Klapper and his wife Teresa, and four grandchildren: Adam Planchock, Tyler Planchock, Megan Kaplan, and John Steen. She was also survived by nieces and nephews who were close to her.

No cause of death has been made public. Her family's tribute remembered her simply as a dedicated educator, an adventurous traveler, a community volunteer, and a loving matriarch whose influence carried on through her family, her former students, and the many people whose lives she touched during her nine decades.