Robin Williams Remembered Fondly in Connecticut

The death of Robin Williams has hit everyone differently.

For some of us, we feel like we’ve lost a friend of the family, even though we never got to know him personally… even though it feels like we did through all the years of him making us laugh or cry.

But for those that actually met him, it hits home a little more.

Two women with Hamden connections, Joanne Cohen and Jackie Goldberg, recounted their time with him to the New Haven Register.

Cohen, who has Tourette syndrome, is a Hamden native who currently lives in Simsbury. Goldberg was the caretaker of a woman battling Parkinson’s disease when she met Williams. Both women said he took the time to understand the struggles of others.

Cohen met Williams while he was filming “The Awakening,” which tells the story of neurologist Oliver Sacks, whom Cohen spent time with as a patient and friend, according to the Register.

“It was an honor to have known him and to have spent time with him,” Cohen told Ebony Walmsley of the New Haven Register. “We shared a common understanding of how the brain can be different and how some people function on different wavelengths sometimes.”

Goldberg met Williams while taking Nancy Nicholson, a resident of the Arden House on Mix Avenue, to the “LIVE with Kelly and Michael” show.

Goldberg said Williams took an interest in learning more about Parkinson’s disease and thanked her for her work.

Read the Register’s full story here.