In Memory of Sylvia Berkowitz

Sylvia Berkowitz was born Sylvia Slater on February 27, 1928 in New York City. She died January 23, 2015 at her home in Santa Barbara, California after a long decline. Sylvia had a twin sister, Lillian. Her beloved husband Ben died in February 2011. She is survived by her children Jeff and Carla.

Undated; late 1940s.

Since Sylvia's life spanned such an extraordinary time, I'll be mentioning a few historical sidelights as I do my best to tell her story.

Sylvia was born into a Yiddish-speaking family and entered public school about 1932 speaking no English. This doesn't appear to have been much of a handicap for her agile mind, and by the late 1940s Sylvia was employed as a children's librarian in New York. Having a children's librarian for a mom is pretty awesome if I do say...

Undated; around 1960.

...but I'm getting ahead of myself.

In fact, Sylvia's young life in a second-generation Jewish immigrant home was difficult. I think the family always had enough to eat, but I'm not completely certain of even that much. Sylvia liked to say that she'd spent a large part of her childhood on roller skates.

Despite hardships, Sylvia became a lover of good books and opera.

When Sylvia was 2, the stock market crashed on Black Friday of 1929, and by the time she was 4, the Great Depression was in full swing. Sylvia was about 6 when a guy named Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. In December 1938, when Sylvia was 11, a chemist named Otto Hahn wrote a letter to the very brilliant Lise Meitner describing some peculiar results of a physics experiment. Ms. Meitner suggested in reply that he might have split the atom. Things unknown to Sylvia happened very quickly after that.

Sylvia's father took his own life while Sylvia was still young.

Sylvia graduated from high school in 1946. By that time there had been a tremendous war and the United States had emerged victorious. But the Jewish culture of central Europe from which Sylvia's parents emigrated scant years before had been obliterated.

Now it so happened that in the 1940s, Sylvia's sister Lillian had friend named Sondra Berkowitz who in turn had a brother named Benjamin. In due time Lillian and Sondra introduced their respective siblings and the two quite hit it off. Sylvia and Ben were married June 25, 1950...

...and emerged from their wedding to discover that on that very day the United States was again at war, this time in Korea.

Ben, who as a foot soldier would likely have died on the beaches of southern Kyūshū but for the U.S. decision to drop the atomic bomb at the end of World War II, was saved from combat a second time--this time, by virtue his of age.

Now married to a promising grad student, Sylvia settled down to the Greenwich Village lifestyle for a bit.

Sylvia in a joking mood. Undated; early 1950s.

In the world at large, three Bell Labs' researchers had invented something they called a "transistor". Other researchers were building the very first "digital computers" using thousands of vacuum tubes. Everyone wanted to own a brand new device called a "television", and the city of New York boasted an astonishing six separate TV stations!

But Ben's Ph.D. program at Columbia wasn't going well. The two soon emigrated from New York to distant Tallahassee, when Ben entered the embryonic graduate chemistry program at Florida State. Here, they discovered their love of bird watching...

What a change for a couple of city mice!
Undated; early 1950s.

...and even made a pilgrimage to search for the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker from canoe at Okefenokee Swamp, where the last confirmed sighting had been made less than two decades before.

After the completion of Ben's doctorate in 1953--an event Sylvia once described as "48 hours with a borrowed typewriter and no sleep"--the couple moved to the Washington, D.C. area, where son Jeff and daughter Carla...

Teeth optional! Undated; about 1962.

...were born, and then on to Santa Barbara, California in the spring of 1962.

Sylvia spent the next several years as a mother and homemaker, but by the late 1960s must have been seeking something more. Perhaps on a whim, Sylvia took an Adult Ed class and discovered the other love of her life: weaving.

Two of Sylvia's magnificent handwoven rugs. 2015 photo.

By the late 1970s Sylvia was an expert with works on display in several galleries and yearly participation in the seasonal Yes Store of Santa Barbara.

Sylvia at a four-harness loom. Examples of her own work
hang on the wall behind her. Undated; late 1970s.

By the early 80s, and in part due to Sylvia's sound views on investment, Sylvia and Ben were able to settle down to a long and happy retirement. This 2005 photograph shows them at home.

Note the loom in the background. Next to the loom is a PC-based automatic weaving system built with technologies that were unimaginable at Sylvia's birth 77 years before (remember those transistors and digital computers?)

The last years of Sylvia's life were plagued with orthopedic problems that robbed her first of the ability to weave and later of her ability to navigate the world without help. But she remained a strong voice until late 2014, when the years finally began to take their toll. Although she is gone, her intelligence, creativity, and sometimes biting sense of humor will never be forgotten.