Morris Chernock | Administrative judge, 99

Morris Chernock, 99, formerly of Overbrook, a retired Social Security administrative law judge, died Nov. 23 at the Quadrangle, a retirement community in Haverford.

Mr. Chernock graduated from South Philadelphia High School and from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He attended the law schools at Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania. After he was admitted to the bar in 1938, he had a practice in Philadelphia.

During World War II, he was a contract attorney for the Naval Aviation Supply Depot in Philadelphia. In the 1960s, he was a Pennsylvania assistant attorney general. From 1972 until his retirement in 1984, he was an administrative law judge in the Social Security office of hearings and appeals in Philadelphia.

A longtime Republican committeeman in Overbrook, Mr. Chernock ran unsuccessfully for the Pennsylvania legislature in the 1950s. His wife, Beatrice Kravitsky Chernock, was a Republican city councilwoman from 1972 to 1984.

Mr. Chernock also rehabilitated houses for sale or rent, said his son, Joel, and was always busy with improvement projects in his own home. He loved working with his hands and had a kiln in his basement, where he made ceramic tiles and once crafted a ceramic chess set.

After moving to the Quadrangle in 1995, Mr. Chernock taught ceramics there. Though he stopped driving his car at 93, his son said, he drove a three-wheeled scooter at the retirement community and had been issued warnings for speeding in the hall.

In addition to his son, Mr. Chernock is survived by a daughter, Deborah Block, and four grandchildren. His wife died in 1994.

The funeral was Nov. 25 at Joseph Levine & Son Memorial Chapel, Philadelphia. Burial was in Har Nebo Cemetery, Philadelphia.