Reneta Morgan Cuff

Reneta (Morgan) Cuff, a homemaker and social worker who lived in New York City and Lee, MA, passed away on March 17, 2025. She was 87 years old.

Reneta was born in Mount Vernon, N.Y., and moved to Needham, MA, with her family while in high school. She met her husband, Daniel F. Cuff, while they were English majors at Boston University 65 years ago, and enjoyed time during her last years in retirement with him at their second home in Lee, in the Massachusetts Berkshires. The couple graduated from B.U. In 1959 and married that year.

They then moved to Springfield. MA, Dan’s hometown, where he landed a job as a reporter at The Daily News, while Reneta found work at Merriam-Webster dictionary in Springfield. Dan sought employment at ever-more challenging journalism jobs — a quest that took them to Providence, New Haven and ultimately New York City. Along the way, Reneta worked at the American Mathematical Society in Providence and the Connecticut radio station WTIC as an ad copywriter.

In New York, where Dan joined The New York Times in 1970 as an editor and reporter, she decided to switch careers and received a master’s degree in social work at Yeshiva University. She worked at the Jewish Child Care Association and the Children’s Aid Society before joining the Board of Education as a social worker at Theodore Roosevelt High School in the Bronx, where she worked from 1988 to 2005.

She leaves her beloved children, Reneta Cuff of Albany, N.Y., Daniel of New York City and Becket, MA., and David, of Brooklyn, N.Y. She also leaves her beloved grandchildren, Daniel and Elizabeth, children of son Daniel and Maki (Mitsui), and Jackson and Patrick, sons of David and Connie (Loo).

She was predeceased by her parents, Jewel (Carone) and Harry Morgan.

She leaves her sister, Andrea (Dermarderosian) of Quincy, MA., and Andrea’s children, Adam of Bedford, MA., and his sister Jessica.

Reneta made life-long friends wherever she was, especially among neighbors in her New York City apartment building, at work, and at the Cuff’s second home in Leisure Lee, a vacation community in the Berkshires, where the Cuffs enjoyed swimming, boating and downhill skiing with their children. She loved the theater (especially Chekhov), the New York Yankees (especially Jeter), dance, musicals and concerts in New York, as well as in the Berkshires at Tanglewood and Jacob’s Pillow.

A memorial service will be held on Friday, May 2, 2025, 12 Noon at Kelly Funeral Home. Burial will follow in Fairmount Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, contributions can be made in her memory to Hospice Care of the Berkshires.