Eugenia Florence Pawlik Zeitlin

Mrs. Zeitlin died in March in Los Angeles, California. She was 99.

At the time of her death, her book collection numbered in the thousands with stacks stretching to the ceilings of her home. Mrs. Zeitlin, the daughter of Polish immigrants, partially attributed her obsession to growing up in “a virtually bookless family in the Depression of the 1930s” in Brooklyn. Still, her mother began teaching her to read before the first grade.

Mrs. Zeitlin graduated from Brooklyn College and earned her master’s in English from New York University and master’s in library science from Rosary College, now Dominican University. She was an honorary life member of the American Association of University Women.

Mrs. Zeitlin and her late husband, Herbert, the founding president of Triton College in suburban Chicago, shared a love of education. The couple also shared a love for their four children: Mark, Joyce, Ann Victoria, and Clare. They advocated for Clare's right to live a full life with access to education and jobs in a time when children with Down syndrome were often underestimated and sometimes institutionalized.

Mrs. Zeitlin published articles and stories in various journals, vividly describing her Polish-American childhood. She carved out a literary life, wherever she was. As a young mother in a California desert town, she recalled underlining passages of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden as her children napped. Eugenia became a lifetime member of the Thoreau Society.

She was fiercely independent. Sometimes books and a bowl of ice cream were the only friends she needed. Yet Mrs. Zeitlin cherished her community, for whom she became a matriarch and a model of longevity with her enduring intelligence, curiosity, wit and elegance. She preferred to be seen only after a fresh application of lipstick.

A lifelong Catholic, she was a member of St. Mel Parish in Woodland Hills and Theresians, which provided spiritual and intellectual enrichment.

Mrs. Zeitlin asked to be buried with the Bible and Thoreau's Walden.

She joked about taking as many books as she could from her vast collection to her grave, "Give me the ones you don't want."

She was predeceased by her husband of 60 years, Herbert, her brother Edwin Pawlik, and her daughters Ann Victoria and Clare Zeitlin. She is survived by her children, Mark Zeitlin and Joyce Zeitlin Harris, and their spouses, Jill Zeitlin and Henry Harris, and her grandchildren, Adam Zeitlin, Janine Zeitlin, Valeria McCarroll and Clare Harris, and her great-grandchildren, Violette Zeitlin Damon, Adeline Zeitlin Damon, and Orielle McCarroll.

Memorials in her name may be sent to Valley Village or Tierra del Sol Foundation. A funeral service for Mrs. Zeitlin will be held Monday, March 25, 2024 at 10 a.m. at St. Mel Parish on 20870 Ventura Blvd. in Woodlands Hills, California.