Harriette Buckner (Kolker) Coret

Harriette Buckner (Kolker) Coret died Septmber 24, 2015, in Miami Beach, Fla. She was 96, Harriette, the daughter of eastern European immigrants, was born and grew up in Tacoma, Wash. She graduated in 1941 from Mills College, Oakland, Calif. She worked as a psychologist for the U.S. Army Air Corps in North Carolina, Florida and Texas during the Second World War. But it was in Tacoma in 1943 that she met her future husband, Leon Kolker, at a USO dance for Jewish soldiers stationed at nearby Ft Lewis, Wash.

Harriette and Leon married in 1945, just a few weeks after Leon returned from combat in Europe. She moved to his hometown St. Louis, and lived in Clayton and Ladue until 1997. She worked as a psychologist at Barnes Hospital and, after her children were older, at the Mental Health Association (MHA) of St Louis. 

As an author, Harriette wrote four books about teenagers dealing with mental health issues, which were published by New Readers Press, designed for adults and teenagers with low literacy skills.  She also wrote several dozen stories (all of them fiction) published by “true confession” magazines, most also dealing with teenage and adult mental health problems familiar to her because she supervised MHA call-in help lines. 

For several years, she authored an advice column “Open Mind,” that appeared in the St Louis Globe Democrat.  Her marriage to Leon Kolker ended in divorce in 1970, and in 1977, she married Dr. Irving Coret, who was on the medical faculty at St. Louis University School of Medicine.  Irving died in 1996, and in 1997, Harriette moved to an independent-living retirement community in Boca Raton, Fla., where she lived until three weeks before her death. She is survived and sadly missed by sons Jimmy Kolker (Britt-Marie Forslund) of Washington, DC , Danny Kolker (Annette B. Fromm) of Miami Beach; stepson Stephen Coret (Betty) of Vancouver, BC and six grandchildren.