Sara Maria Adler

Sara Maria Adler passed away peacefully on June 21st, while asleep at her residence in Washington, DC, from complications of the motor neuron disease, ALS, which struck her over four years ago. She is survived by her spouse of 48 years, Robert L. Adler, their son Joe and his wife Carrie of Silver Spring, Maryland, their daughter Caroline and her husband Tristan of Washington, DC, their four grandchildren, Ben, Penny, Liana and Halle, and Sara’s brother and his wife, Max Pizer and Claudia Bonn of New York City.

Sara was Professor Emerita of Scripps College in Claremont, California, where she led the teaching of Italian Studies at The Claremont Colleges for more than 40 years before retiring in 2018. An endowed Professorship of Italian was subsequently created in her name. Before moving to California and teach-ing at Scripps, Sara taught Italian at Georgetown, Wellesley and Harvard. Her academic interests cen-tered around Italian fiction of the Twentieth Century and women poets of the Italian Renaissance. She authored the book, Calvino: The Writer as Fablemaker, and a number of peer reviewed published arti-cles and papers in her fields of interest. Sara was a former member of the Board of Trustees of The Webb Schools in Claremont and of a Board Advisory Committee of Scripps College. She was a gradu-ate of Smith College and was awarded a PhD from Harvard University in 1975. Sara was born to Morris and Laura Pizer on September 14, 1946, and grew up in Malden and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Sara loved people, and they loved her. Her greatest joys were from being with her children and grand-children, from loving her husband, family and friends, and from seeing her students blossom and mature and her colleagues succeed. She was full of good humor and fine taste to the end, was quick to appre-ciate the ironies of life, and had empathy for the challenges it presents. She braved the agony of ALS with the heart of someone determined to continue to experience the pleasures of life with dignity and grace, to count the blessings she still had, and to spread joy and shun sorrow. Those who loved her could learn from her both inside and outside the classroom. She was beautiful and exemplary and will always be remembered as such.

There will be a short graveside service for family and friends at Parklawn Cemetery (Menorah Gardens Section) in Rockville, Maryland (enter from Veirs Mill Road), at 12 Noon on Monday, June 28. In the fall, the family plans to have a further celebration of Sara’s life at a venue in Southern California, with details to be later announced. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to Scripps College, Claremont California, directed either to the endowment of the Sara M. Adler Professor of Italian or to the Robert and Sara Adler Scholarship Fund.