Leonora Kalisch

My mother Leonora was born May 14, 1919 in Chicago, Illinois to Sampson Abraham Liph and Rose Fein ( both russian immigrants who knew each other in Russia). Sampson studied some sciences ( i saw one of his lab books) and may have been involved in some agricultural grain studies. He was a man people in the community came to for advice. I remember him as a man who put a raw egg in his corn flakes. My mother lived in a one room apartment with her younger sister June and parents on the southside. -She excelled in her studies and was in an advanced classes in high school. she got her degree in social work at the Univsity of Chicago and later her MS. Her contemporaries/classmates included saul bellow whom she may have dated. Her teachers included George Bernard Shaw (my father would interpret some of his lectures to her). She met my father when he was at iowa and they dated regularly. With his first paycheck he sent her roses. They were married in 1942. Their life centered around the university of minnesota where my father taught and it was a vibrant exciting time. She worked as a social worker at childrens home society, quitting when they adopted me in 51 and Peggy in 53. We would camp in the summers and ski and swim and hike during the year.The family spent a year and two summers in France (sabbatical) in 1962. She accompanied my father on many worldwide trips to various math conferences. She did not work again professionally until 1971-95 at the va in long beach where she had neurosurgery , spinal cord injury and psychiatric wards and later as an administrator working with students getting their masters. She loved her work. She and my father traveled extensively, Europe, Russia, China in the 70s, Middle east and more. When she retired she got active in tai chi, yoga, aqua aerobics, museum outtings, concerts etc. She also belonged to a gourmet group and cooked and sampled various exotic cuisines. She maintained a strong social conscience and an interest in societal/cultural affairs and politics until she could no longer. In 1999 she was diagnosed with alzheimers and small vessel disease. It took it's toll. However, she recognized me and the sound of my voice until the end and would track me with her eyes and try to talk when I visited . She is sorely missed but her last days were difficult and we trust she is at peace.

MEMORIAL FOR LEONORA KALISCH

I met Leonora when my cousin Gerhard came to Wellesley, MA, where my wife was then teaching, to introduce her and later when we went to California for academic reasons and visited Gerard and her in their lovely home. So I have always thought of Leonora in connection wit my cousin and know very little of what her life had been like apart from her connection with him. Gerhard was the son of my mother's sister Margaret and being two years older than I, always someone to look up to. I have a few very clear memories of the two of us when we were very little for he was my first male companion almost from the start. I refrain from going into details about our chamber-pot races which have become notorious in the family history. Our friendship lasted through childhood and beyond. For example, when we were in high school Gerhard had discovered that one could borrow books from the university library, so off he went on his bicycle to get books on mathematics, already his favorite subject, and I not to be outdone followed him to get my mathematical books. Alas, they remained a mystery to me and I soon had to give up the goal of becoming another mathematician.

Leonora was born in Chicago as the daughter of Russian immigrants and both her training and professional career as a social worker originally took place in that region. Gerhard met her and dated her when he was teaching in Iowa. They married and he taught at Minnesota until 1965 when they went to UCI in Irvine, California. What Leonora represented to Gerhard was not only personal fulfillment, but also a need for stability and a normal life. For fate had robbed him of both at an early age. First was the fact that his parents were separated, his father living in Berlin and the rest of his family in Breslau. Then came emigration in which he was successful in first working as a farm hand in France and than gaining access to the United States, but he left behind his mother and sister who fell victims to the Holocaust. Hence, perhaps more than to most people, it became important to have children, as it was also to Leonora and the result were a son John and later a daughter Peggy. John had a close relation with his mother that lasted through her last illness to the very end. Peggy also had a good relationship with her mother. Sadly, Peggy predeceased her mother and brother.

By: Heini Immerwahr