A celebration of life service will be held Wednesday, Oct. 5 at 6 p.m. at the Park Theatre in Cranston for Merilyn (Meri) Kennedy who died Sept. 1  at the age of 59.

Despite a prolonged illness, Meri wrote the Chatter column in the Cranston Herald until a couple of weeks before her death. She worked for the newspaper as a columnist and reporter for 28 years, boasting of never having missed a deadline. She was known by her colleagues for focusing on the positive, earning her the title of “bearer of good news.”

Born in Warwick, Meri was the daughter of the late Mitchell and Jean Geller. She graduated from Cranston East in 1981 and went on to earn a Bachelor’s Degree in English fro Rhode Island College. She served as the executive director of the Cranston Chamber of Commerce from 195 to 1995. She was inducted into the Cranston Hall of Fame in 2019. She is survived by a daughter, Jennifer Rawson, her husband Christopher of Whitinsville, MA, granddaughters Madison and Amelia Rawson, a sister Lori Perry and her husband Carl, a brother Arnold Geller and his wife Maureen of Warwick and lifelong companion Steve Popiel.