Henrietta Slote

Henrietta H. Slote of Ann Arbor died Thursday, November 13, in Arbor Hospice. She was 84. Hetsy, as she was known to all, was born January 29, 1930 in Philadelphia, PA, to Dr. John C. Howell and Henrietta I. Howell. After graduating as valedictorian of Friends Select School, where she captained the field hockey, basketball, and tennis teams, Hetsy earned a four-year scholarship to Mount Holyoke College. In college she majored in creative writing under Joyce Horner, made junior year Phi Beta Kappa, captained the college's field hockey, basketball, and tennis teams, and graduated summa cum laude. Upon graduation she earned, then deferred, a Fulbright Fellowship and used a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies to fund enrollment in the English Master of Arts program at the University of Michigan, where she continued her fiction-writing with Roy Cowden, winning a major Hopwood prize for a novel later optioned by Charles Scribner and Sons. After her M.A. Hetsy took that Fulbright, studying the works of Marcel Proust and Henry James at the Universities of Lyon and Aix-Marseilles, in France. Hetsy married Alfred Slote August 23, 1951. They returned to Ann Arbor, now with two small children, in 1956, and soon had a third. Hetsy later worked as an editor at the University of Michigan's Business Administration School and then as Assistant to the Dean of the University of Michigan Law School, retiring from the position in 1991. She was also an alumna trustee of Mount Holyoke.

Loving and beloved daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother, and friend, Hetsy was predeceased by her sister Joan. She is survived by Alfred, her husband of 63 years, two sons, John (Nancy Cohen) and Benjamin (Susan), a daughter, Elizabeth Gilbert, and seven grandchildren, Sophia Slote, Frances Slote, Miranda Cohen, Audrey Slote, Joseph Slote, Irene Gilbert, and Henry Gilbert. A memorial service will be held at 11 am on Saturday, November 29 at Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church, 1400 W. Stadium Blvd, Ann Arbor, MI 48104. In lieu of flowers memorial gifts in Hetsy's honor may be made to the church.