Richard Negro Amelar

Richard Negro was a student from 1947 to 1949. He took Weaving with Anni Albers in fall of 1948.

Relationships

Wife: Fellow BMC student, Rosalind Dyer.

Obituary:

"Richard Amelar, 88 died on the 9th of December, 2016 at Hackensack University Medical Center in Hackensack, New Jersey after a lengthy battle with congestive heart disease. Mr Amelar was born on July 11, 1928 in Paterson, New Jersey and spent most of his childhood in Fair Lawn, New Jersey.

After graduating Fair Lawn High School in 1946, he attended Black Mountain College in North Carolina where he was a student for three years. While at Black Mountain, he befriended a professor and mentor of his, physicist Natasha Goldowski Renner who had been involved in the Manhattan project. He was also privileged to meet Albert Einstein through his association with Renner.

After he left Black Mountain College, Richard attended Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh, PA for 2 years majoring in physics but eventually deciding that he wanted to become a writer instead. During his days at Black Mountain he also met his first wife, Rosalind Dyer. They were married on May 4, 1953.

Shortly after their wedding, Richard was drafted into the army during the Korean war. He served there for two years attaining the rank of Corporal 1st class. As a soldier, Richard (along with a friend) helped to reform the entire testing and placement procedure for all soldiers in the US 7th Army.

After he left the army he moved to Philadelphia with his wife where they lived for several years, eventually returning to New Jersey. During these years he tried to get work as a professional writer but found it difficult. He also became a father to his two children, Michele and Chris, and the family moved around through several towns in the North Jersey area, eventually settling in Park Ridge.

In the 1969 he founded ACI, his own advertising agency initially based in Fort Lee, NJ and worked there as president until 2004. In 1997 he married his 2nd wife, Suzanne Shildkraut and lived with her and her son, Derek in Park Ridge until 2006 when they moved to Wanaque, NJ. There he continued to work part time as a freelance writer in the field of advertising.

As he grew older he became afflicted with heart complications and had surgeries to correct the problems. Through his seventies and eighties he worked on several literary projects including his first novel entitled, "Almost a Lion" which he finished and a collection of poems and short stories entitled, "Love, God and Other Distractions". While neither work was published in his lifetime, plans to publish them posthumously are moving forward.

Richard's friends and family describe him as a very uniquely gifted individual with a piercing intellect and a generous soul. He was forever an aspiring poet who loved among other things, reading, writing, opera, history, ping pong, politics and philosophy. He had great affection for his family and is survived by his wife Sue and her son Derek, his ex-wife Rosalind, and his two children Michele Tusken and Chris Amelar along with his grand-daughter Cynthia Amelar."