Lola at age 15
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Lola Roppel, 77, a Cedar Key artist and a founding member of the Cedar Key Poets, died January 19 in Gainesville, FL. "She painted as long as she could, and she was content as long as she could paint," said her daughter Meredith Henry. Opening an accordion file of papers in search of examples of her mother's poetry, Meredith exclaimed, "It smells like Lola!" Inhaling deeply, Meredith added, "Estee Lauder's YOUTH DEW, and cigarettes!" Born Lola Burkowsky in Brooklyn, NY, in 1930, she met her husband Richard Meredith Roppel in Washington, D.C. in 1949. Dick spotted Lola's work in a D. C. gallery, they met, and they remained together until Dick's death in 1996.
Before retiring to Cedar Key in 1982, the couple lived in New Haven, CT, where both attended Yale University, and in Columbus, OH; Savannah, GA; and East Lansing, MI. While Dick completed graduate study and was employed as a biophysicist, Lola continued to study and to paint.
"They loved one another very much, although they were polar opposites," said Lola and Dick's daughter Laurie Frottier. "She had a very open mind and he had some pretty strange ideas. She was grounded in reality; he was the absent-minded professor."
At the Yale University School of Design, Lola studied with Josef Albers and Bernard Chaet. She studied also at the Art Students League in New York and with Hoyt L. Sherman and Sidney Chafetz at Ohio State University.
Lola often painted from a distinctive stance, her daughter Meredith recalled, folding at the waist and working on the floor (rather than on a table or easel) with large, loose strokes. In later years, she worked on a smaller scale, principally in watercolor.
Asked if he thought Lola could have painted in watercolor as well as in acrylics from her bent-at-the-waist stance, the Gainesville framer Don Cavanaugh said, "Lola was a determined little lady. If she wanted to do it, she'd do it." In addition to Lola and Dick's daughter Meredith, of Gainesville, and their son Thaddeus Roppel, of Auburn, AL, Lola is survived by Meredith's daughter, Rebekkah Carney, Rebekkah's husband Ben, and Rebekkah and Ben's soon-to-be-adoptive son Shannon Moore, all of Bloomsbury, NJ,; by Meredith's long-time sweetheart Charlie Hyde; and by Thaddeus's wife Tammy and their daughter Sara.
Lola and Dick's second daughter was born in New Haven and raised by an adoptive family in Guilford, CT. In 1983, that daughter now Laurie Frottier of Wellfleet, MA located and reunited with Lola and Dick. Lola is survived also by Laurie's husband Jean Frottier and children Emmett Lynn, Adra Grace Lynn, and Annalise Frottier.
Meredith Henry is organizing a memorial celebration of Lola and Dick Roppel's lives, to take place in Cedar Key. 
Lola painting with her granddaughter, Sara
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