Shirley Budhos

Shirley Budhos (born Sura Leah Zaltzman) passed away at Lenox Hill Hospital on January 24th at the age of 88. She was born in 1929, in East New York, the only child of immigrants from outside Kiev who ran a dairy store. Her first six years were spent speaking Yiddish until she experienced the shock of entering an English-speaking public school. But English became her love, and she would go on to study English literature at Brooklyn and Queens Colleges, eventually receiving her PhD at St. John’s University in 1980 and publishing her dissertation in 1987 on the South African author Doris Lessing.

Shirley was a rebel, a force of nature, an iconoclast. She rebelled to spend time in Greenwich Village, travel across the country to California, much to the dismay of her Old World parents. And while working for the Israeli labor organization, Histadrut in the 1950s, she met her husband, Walter Budhos, an Indo-Guyanese graduate student in economics, who was working at the Indian Consulate. She lived with her son in then British Guiana for several months with her husband’s family in a small village in Berbice.

Walter and Shirley were adamant that they raise their children in the international environment of Parkway Village, a community in Queens built for UN families. Shirley would also take her children for long trips abroad in the summers to visit family and immerse in other countries. She sewed, knitted and crocheted, making curtains, table cloths and clothes for herself and others. She was a strong presence in Parkway, always helping foreign families settle in, and a fierce and outspoken mother figure to many young people. She taught at local schools, the English Department of Queens College and became a high school English teacher at Flushing High School, where she was an extraordinary mentor, especially to her immigrant students, and served as the college and newspaper advisor. She changed many lives, drawing upon her own bicultural existence to help students find their futures in a new country.

Shirley retired in 1996 and moved to Greenwich Village, traveled the world on various trips and study programs, and walking the lengths of Manhattan for museums, movies, theater, lectures, and spices. She was a voracious reader, writer, and a doting grandmother. Over the years she had numerous falls and yet always got up again and exceeded expectations. Shirley is survived by her son, Philip Ashley, a musician/composer, and a daughter, Marina Tamar, an author/professor, her four grandchildren, Juliet, Peter, Alexander (Sasha) and Raphael, daughter-in-law Janet Ashley and son-in-law Marc Aronson. A memorial will be held in Manhattan later in the spring. Contributions in her name to PEN America, NY Immigration Coalition or Jefferson Market Library Garden.