Lili-Charlotte (Lolo) Sarnoff was born in Frankfurt, Germany, the daughter of Willy and Martha Dreyfus, nee Koch. The family moved to Berlin in Lolo's youth. There she finished high school and went on to graduate from the Reimann Art School in 1936. Lolo's great dream to be a fashion designer has never been realized.
After the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Lolo's mother moved with Lolo to Switzerland. However, Lolo decided to study history of art in Florence, Italy at the Florence University, from 1936 to 1938. Before obtaining a degree, Lolo married an American doctoral student, Stephen D. Heineman, studying at the University of Zurich.
In 1940 Lolo's husband was drafted and called back to America. Here Lolo joined the Red Cross Nursing Corps and graduated from Bellevue Hospital, New York, in their first class in 1942. While serving as a Red Cross Nurse at Bellevue Lolo met her future husband, Dr. Stanley J. Sarnoff, whom she married in 1948.
In the early 1950s Lolo and Stanley lived in Boston, MA where they became the proud parents of Dana and Robert. In 1954 the family moved to Bethesda, MD where Lolo assisted Stanley in a new section of the National Heart Insititute–Cardiovascular Physiology at NIH .
Lolo and Stanley co-invented the Electro-Phrenic Respirator, a device which replaced the iron lung in the treatment of Bulbar Polio. This device later saved Dana's life who had been stricken with this deadly disease.
Lolo co-authored several scientific papers with her husband and was accepted by the scientific world. In 1962 she was selected to be included in the American Men of Science.
Lolo resigned from N.I.H. in 1959 to help Stanley start his own company,at that time called Rodana Research Corporation. Later this company, with Lolo as its president, grew into Survival Technology, Inc., a public company specializing in automatic injectors filled with an antidote against nerve gas warfare, and the Cardio-Beeper, a device used to monitor emergency heart attack alerts. In 1961 Stanley resigned from the N.I.H. and took over the management himself. At this point in the early sixties Lolo resigned from her scientific life and began devoting her time to community endeavors, helping to establish the "The Foreign Students Service Council," co-founding the Washington Performing Arts Society Women's Committee, the Washington Opera Women's Committee, joining the fledgling Corcoran Women's Committee, and becoming a trustee of the National Ballet.
In 1967, Lolo became fascinated by fiber optics and led her to become the artist she had dreamed about since graduating from the Reimann School thirty years earlier. She was one of the first to combine the use of the medium with plexiglas to make light sculptures. Prolific and diverse, Lolo has had exhibitions of her artwork both nationally and internationally since 1969, and a number of her pieces grace private and public collections all over the world.
Lolo's favorite piece, The Flame, has been located at the Kennedy Center's Opera House, first tier, since the Kennedy Center opened in 1971. The Flame remains the only sculpture at the Kennedy Center not dedicated by a foreign government, except the portraits of Presidents Kennedy and Eisenhower.
In 1986, while a trustee at the Art Barn, which she helped found, Lolo was contacted by one of the N.I.H.'s Directors to inquire if she would be interested in teaching art to Alzheimers' patients who were spending six months at the N.I.H. The new art program was an immediate success which continued for the duration of the patients' stay at the N.I.H.
In 1988, Lolo and three other trustees resigned from the Art Barn board to form Arts For The Aging, Inc. AFTA is Lolo's life's work and will go on helping people with all forms of dementia.
Lolo was a good friend of Dorothy Thompson when living in New York. In 1947, while visiting Dorothy at Twin Farms, in Barnard, Vermont, Lolo purchased her beloved home in Barnard. Here, she and her family spent summers and holidays for the rest of her life. Lolo loved this little town where she supported many organizations and established the Silver Lake Association with Herb Hirschland. This organization has been responsible for keeping Silver Lake the wonderful center of the town that it is. Many Barnard school children have received scholarships from an endowment that Lolo set up many years ago.
Lolo is survived by her children, Dana Bargezi and Robert and Tricia Sarnoff, by her grandchildren, Nick Bargezi, Ivan and Genesis Belanger, Kyle and Patrick Feinson, and by her great-granddaughter, Lily Sophie Bargezi.
The staff and caregivers at Lolo's homes, both in Bethesda and Barnard, provided support and care for years and deserve a huge debt of gratitude.
The burial and memorial service will be held in Vermont at a later date.
Lolo would be happy if memorial donations would be made to Arts for the Aging, Inc., 12320 Parklawn Drive, Rockville, MD 20852, United States Tel. (301) 255-0103 (www.aftaarts.org)
The Cabot Funeral Home in Woodstock is assisting the family.