Emerita Postlewait

Emerita "Emmy" Postlewait, of Santa Clara, California, passed away peacefully on August 2, 2026, at the age of eighty-seven and a half, with her family by her side. Hers was, by any measure, a full-circle life: a girl, carried out of Latvia with nothing, who spent the rest of her days making sure that everyone she met had somewhere to stand, something to learn, and someone to look out for them.

Emmy was born December 27, 1938 in Daugavpils, Latvia, the second of nine children — though at the time of her birth, none of her family could have known how much history was about to ask of them. In 1944, with the Second World War closing in, her parents, Leonards and Albina Latkovski, gathered what they could carry and fled with Emmy, three siblings and her uncle. What followed was six years in displaced person camps in Germany, funded by the United States. Seven family members in a single room, six years of waiting and watching doors to Argentina and France open part way, then quietly close. Through all of it, what mattered most to her family was staying together.

The family arrived in Louisville, Kentucky, in December 1950, when Emmy was eleven. Latvian friends who had arrived in the US earlier sponsored their passage, and Emmy's father — a linguist fluent in thirteen languages — took a position teaching at Bellarmine College. He held teaching and learning to be among the most important things a person could do, and it is not hard to see, in the shape of Emmy's own life, how deeply that lesson took.

It would be the early 1960s before they learned the fate of the relatives who had stayed behind in Latvia. Out of that early scarcity, Emmy carried a lifelong faith in what people could build for one another — and in education, above all, as the surest way to build it.

She became a teacher herself, first teaching elementary school in Dayton, Ohio, and then, in 1962, wanting the chance to travel and see the world, she did something brave and adventurous: she joined the Peace Corps, an organization still new and finding its footing. During training in New York, she met Paul “Pops” Postlewait and thought he made things fun. They were both sent to Africa and served a year each in Somalia and Liberia, where she taught elementary school. It was in Liberia that they married — a wedding a very long way from Daugavpils and Louisville, and a fitting one for two people who were ready for adventure and had already learned that home could be built almost anywhere.

When their service ended, they were in no hurry to find the shortest way back. They spent six months traveling through South America — Argentina, Venezuela, Peru — often hitchhiking, trusting strangers and roads and each other. Eventually they settled in Washington State and then in California, where the rest of Emmy's life unfolded in its many chapters: running a crafts business with Paul through the 1970s, teaching school, and later, in 1977, learning word processing when it was still brand new and moving into technology work at Syntex, Syva, and Fujitsu.

She was fortunate to make several trips back to Latvia, starting in the 1990s, to meet the family who had stayed behind, and, in time, she brought her own children and, later, some grandchildren, along with her.

Asked what a young person ought to do after college, she was known to suggest going to Mozambique and doing some good in the world. Asked what to wear to an event, she had a standard answer: "It's not a fashion show."

She returned, in the end, to what she loved best. At Santa Clara Adult Education, she taught introductory computer classes, opening the same door of opportunity for others that education had once opened for her, until she retired at seventy-eight. Even then she did not stop teaching. She volunteered for years with immigrant families, helping them learn English — offering strangers the same kind welcome her own family had once needed and received.

Emmy had a gift for keeping people close. She stayed in touch with former Peace Corps friends, neighbors, co-workers, and students for decades, and she never forgot a birthday, sending cards, year after year. Beginning when her children were in high school, she hosted Sunday night dinners at her house — family, friends, friends of friends, and neighbors, all of them welcome at her table. She made a habit, an art really, of pulling scattered friends together for lunches and outings, refusing to let distance be the end of a friendship. She believed people in need were worth looking out for and staying in touch with, and that education was the most reliable form of help there was.

She gave her time for many years as a board member of the Center for Employment Training in San Jose, and she supported causes like Baja Bound/Baja Ed, which builds housing and funds scholarships for students in Mexico — always coming back to the same conviction: that a person given the chance to learn is a person given the chance at everything else.

She was preceded in death by her parents, Leonards and Albina Latkovski; her siblings Generosa “Gen” Collins, Anastasius “Andy” Latkovski, Leonard Latkovski, Jr., Stephanie Latkovski and Anatolis Anthony “Tony” Latkovski; and her husband, Paul. She is survived by her four children — Georgia Postlewait (Greg Reggiardo), Chelle Guardino (Joe Guardino), Peter Postlewait (Brenda Rider), and Daniel Postlewait (Evell Corral); nine grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and sisters Aurelia “Pat” Hensley, Victoria “Vikki” Preston and Beatrice “Bea” Northcott; a family that, like the life she built it from, spans a very long way from where it started.

Donations in her honor may be made to the Center for Employment Training (cetweb.edu), Baja Bound/Baja Ed (bajabound.org or bajaed.org).

A Celebration of Life will be held on Saturday, August 29, 2026, at the Santa Clara Senior Center 1303 Fremont Street. Guests can arrive by 12:45 PM, with the service starting at 1:00 PM. There will also be a Zoom option