Claire Shefftz

Claire Helen Hisler Shefftz was born in the Bronx on January 28, 1934, to parents who had immigrated from what had been known as Kolomea of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Kolomyya in Ukraine). When the COVID-19 pandemic first emerged, and comparisons were made to the Spanish Flu, she wrote of the time that: “My mother, her father, and sister were refugees [from World War I] in a small village in a beautiful scenic area of Czechoslovakia in 1918. It was customary for the church bells to ring when someone died. And my mother remembered hearing those bells ring very much in those days.” They had been evacuated to there from Kolomea by train at night, and “could hear wolves howling when they passed through the forest, and could look back at the city all lit up by the battle.” They returned home after the war to find “only one wall of their house still standing, and my mother and her sister were told by their father that he was very sorry, but he would have to sell the pearls their mother (who died when my mother was three years old) left for them in order to provide a roof over their heads.” She also wrote, back in 2011, when America had long since nearly forgotten the Spanish Flu, “I don’t know that much about my father’s stay [as a World War I evacuated refugee] in upper Austria, but I do know that they had to leave quickly and go back to Kolomea after my father’s older brother’s wife, died of maybe the Spanish flu in 1918, soon after she had her fourth child.” Against these harrowing experiences, just a small apartment in the South Bronx during the Great Depression was appreciated by her immigrant parents, even more crowded when shared with her father’s mother. (Also, “No telephone- you made phone calls from the telephone booths at the candy store.”) She and her younger sister Trudy grew up so close to the Bronx Zoo that they could hear the lions roar at night. She attended Queens College and then obtained her graduate degree in education from Harvard University. She taught elementary school in the Boston area before moving to Binghamton with her husband Melvin, a history professor at Harpur College (now Binghamton University). They raised two sons together, and were married for almost 48 years, until his death in 2011. She was an equally devoted daughter: she looked after her parents in the Bronx when her father Aaron was debilitated by a stroke, after which her mother Mary required increasingly difficult care. And she coordinated the translation from Yiddish into English of Pinkes Kolomey (www.JewishGen.org/Yizkor/Kolomyya/Kolomyya.html), the memorial book of her parents’ Jewish community, destroyed by the Nazi Holocaust. She was also a devoted sister. Once when sorting through a half-forgotten safe deposit box, a note was found to her sons, dated from the time that she was battling cancer. If she did not make it, she wanted to ensure that her sons would continue to look after her sister, since although her husband was generous of both spirit and wallet, his stereotypical absent-minded professor nature might find him more focused on a nearly forgotten British currency devaluation historical crisis rather than his sister-in-law’s needs. Even after Trudy’s death, when she was mistakenly interred in a pauper’s grave, Claire fought hard -- and won -- against the New York City faceless bureaucracy to have her sister disinterred and provided a proper resting place. And of course she was a loving grandmother, and in turn loved by all four of her grandchildren, who now so dearly miss their Grandma Claire. For many years she ran the children’s library at Temple Israel and organized the annual book fair at the Binghamton Jewish Community Center, among numerous other volunteer activities for the local Jewish community. She was also active for many years in the League of Women Voters, including redistricting efforts and election ballot supervision. She died (not “passed” -- she was very insistent against such a euphemism for herself) on November 4, 2020 after a gradual decline triggered by a fall in May. Her sons are enormously grateful to the assistance, companionship, and compassion provided to their mother during this period from their neighborhood childhood friend Maria Muscatello. She is predeceased by her husband Dr. Melvin Charles Shefftz and her younger sister Tudy Hisler Myers. She is survived by her sons and daughters-in-law Jonathan and Andrea of Amherst, Mass., Benjamin and Amy of Soda Springs, Cal., and her four grandchildren Micayla, of Amherst, and Caleb, Anna, and Aaron of Soda Springs. A graveside funeral service will be held at 1:00pm on Friday, November 6 2020 at Temple Israel Cemetery, 719 Conklin Road, Conklin with Rabbi Geoffrey Brown officiating. Donations in her memory may be made to Temple Israel, Binghamton Jewish Community Center, and Jewish Federation of Greater Binghamton. To forward condolences please visit www.demunn.com . Arrangements for the family are directed by the DeMunn Funeral Home.