Dorothy & Howard Handler

Dorothy Daskal was born in 1937 in the Bronx to Jack and Yetta Daskal, the fourth of their five children. Her parents divorced in 1939, and in 1941, she went to live with her foster parents, Nathan and Gertye Barmutz and their daughter. Jack remarried in 1946, and had another son. Altogether, Dorothy had three brothers: Herb, Alex, and Billy, and two sisters, Bunny and Barbara. When she was 14, her foster father died.

Dorothy was an avid reader and her reading was encouraged by her aunt Fanny, who shared, as well as her love of books, a curiosity about the world and the customs of people from other cultures. She excelled in all the humanities and loved school. Although it was assumed that, like the rest of her family, both biological and foster, her formal education would end at the graduation from high school, her beloved social worker, Yetta Appel, helped her to achieve a scholarship to college at CCNY, which she attended with her best friend Ceil Bergman (later Forman). While at college, she made friends with several women with whom she remained in close contact throughout her life: Sheila, Marilyn, and Judi. It was also at CCNY that she reconnected with a boy she had known slightly during her teen years, Howard Handler. They married in 1959, and had two daughters, Nina and Leslie.

After earning a degree in education, Dorothy became an elementary school teacher, teaching first in New York, and then in Tucson, Arizona, where she and Howard moved in 1961 for Howard’s doctoral studies at the University of Arizona. Dorothy retired from full-time teaching in 1962, following the birth of her first child, and went back to the profession as a substitute in the late 1970s after having moved to California in 1971.

Involved with many organizations, she worked part-time for the Jewish Federation of Orange County, and was part of the Sisterhood at congregation Shir Ha Ma-A’Lot.

When she and Howard moved to Longmont in 1998, she found a warm welcome in the Jewish community, and especially in the Longmont Shabbat Group. Among her closest Colorado friends, she counted Susan Scruggs, Marilyn Belchinsky, Collette Jacobi, Ruth Rosenblum, Cheryl Clayton, and Shirley Dodge, all of whom were invaluable help to her during her battle with cancer.

Dorothy belonged to at least three book groups over the years, and the final one was her favorite. She briefly wrote, produced, and performed on a local-access radio program and left behind a high bar for her successor to clear. But her greatest joy was in being a grandmother to her two granddaughters.

Dorothy died on August 4, 2022, following a one-and-a-half year-long bout of cancer.

She is survived by her daughters Leslie and Nina Handler, son-in-law Bill Miranda, and granddaughters Laurel and Sydney Handler-Vosen, and brother Alex Daskal.

Obituary for Howard Handler 1936-2020

Howard Handler was born in 1936 in the Bronx to Rose and Sidney Handler. He had a younger sister, Renée, and a large and close extended family. In 1959 he married Dorothy. They had two daughters: Nina, born in 1962, and Leslie, born in 1965.

Showing an aptitude for science, he attended Stuyvesant High School, graduating in 1953, then went to CCNY, where he majored in electrical engineering and earned a minor in mathematics. He graduated in 1958, and then, while working at ITT, attended NYU for his Master’s in Electrical Engineering, finishing in 1960. He moved to Tucson, Arizona for his PhD in 1961, graduating in 1967. His career started when he worked for Burr Brown, where he met the people who, with him, left for Southern California in 1971 to start their own company, Function Modules, Incorporated. He lived in California (Orange County) from 1971-1998, including the year he commuted from Westminster to San José, working for a variety of companies, all of which focused on power supplies. He always liked the challenge of starting something new and was excited to work with small companies, to keep investigating and learning new things. He moved to Longmont, Colorado in 1998, finishing his career at StorageTek, from which he retired in 2008.

Howard’s interests included classical music, racquetball, keeping up with current events, and tinkering; he had stopped working strictly as an engineer in the mid-1970s, moving into management, but he still enjoyed keeping his hand in design. While in California, he taught as an adjunct professor at UCI and Golden West College, teaching math to engineering students, a job he continued once he moved to Longmont, teaching for some years at CU Denver, and at Front Range Community College.

One of the things he treasured most in Colorado, was the friendships he made with a group of men who alternated a Thursday poker game with a Friday lunch. Members include Jack Belchinsky and Arnie Rosenthal

Howard died on May 8, 2020, following a long decline. He was survived by his wife Dorothy, his daughters Leslie and Nina Handler, son-in-law Bill Miranda, and granddaughters Laurel and Sydney Handler-Vosen.

A Celebration of Life will be held for Dorothy and Howard on June 21, 2023 at 2:00 pm at Howe Mortuary's St. Vrain Room.