Krishna Samantrai

Krishna was a daughter of Prithvinath Kanwar, an engineer for Indian Railways, and Kamala Kanwar. Upon Indian independence, she became one of the millions of refugees displaced by the country’s partition. From the age of eight she was a resident, with her family, of Delhi, the capital the Republic of India. It is there that she received her formal education at Queen Mary School and Delhi University.

Her family intended that she undertake a medical career. However, after a year of medical school, Krishna chose to pursue child psychology via social work, eventually completing her masters at the Delhi School of Social Work. She married a fellow student, Bhrajabundhu Samantrai, and had two children, Rajeev, born in 1962, and the Ranu, born in 1963.

In the 1970s she forged her own way again by emigrating to the U.S. She pursued further graduate study at Smith College’s School for Social Work in Northampton, Massachusetts and eventually settled in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was in Ann Arbor that she reunited her family, bringing her children from India in 1972. After seeing them through school she moved to Los Angeles.

After earning her Ph.D., at the University of Southern California, she undertook a long and distinguished career in psychiatric social work. She is the author of three books in the field, Prevention in Child Welfare (1993), Interviewing in Health and Human Services (1996), and Culturally Competent Public Child Welfare Practice (2003).

She was emerita professor of social work at California State University, Sacramento and at the Smith College School for Social Work.

She is survived by her daughter Ranu Samantrai; her son-in-law, De Witt Douglas Kilgore; her grandson, Roshan S. C. Kilgore, and her granddaughter, Rahel K. T. Samantrai. Her son, Rajeev Samantrai, died in 2009.

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.DayDeremiahFrye.com for the Samantrai family.