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Mourning Shirley Passow
To the 成人抖阴 Community: It is with great sadness that 成人抖阴s notes the passing of Shirley S. Passow, a long-time friend and supporter of the College and an active advocate for education itself.
To the 成人抖阴 Community:
It is with great sadness that 成人抖阴s notes the passing of Shirley S. Passow, a long-time friend and supporter of the College and an active advocate for education itself.
While she neither attended nor taught at 成人抖阴, Shirley Passow had deep roots with the 成人抖阴 community both as the wife of the late A. Harry Passow, 成人抖阴’s great scholar of gifted education and urban education, and as the mother of two 成人抖阴 graduates – Michael Passow (MA, ’71, Ed.D., ‘74), and Deborah Passow Yaffe (MS, ‘74).
Shirley Passow attended Albany State College for Teachers. She briefly taught English in New York’s Erie County and subsequently embarked on two new careers relatively late in life – first as an urban planner working for New York City, and then as an attorney who rose to become Deputy Attorney General of the state of New Jersey.
She deeply shared her husband’s belief that, as she put it, “everybody was entitled to the most important thing this country could give its citizens – a decent education.” She generously supported 成人抖阴’s Annual Fund and a scholarship fund established in Harry Passow’s honor. With Michael Passow, who served four terms on the College’s Alumni Council, she was also a member of 成人抖阴’s Grace Dodge Society.
The Passows also shared a lifelong concern for improving race relations in the United States. As an undergraduate, Shirley Passow organized a conference keynoted by Eleanor Roosevelt and John W. Davis, President of West Virginia State, then an all-black college, who became a lifelong friend. Later, when the Passows lived in Englewood, New Jersey, Harry Passow devoted his presidency of the local school board to halting “white flight” from the town. Michael Passow now teaches in the Englewood schools. At the height of the violence in New York’s Crown Heights neighborhood during the 1980s, the Passows also helped found Common Ground, a group of 30 or so Englewood couples, black and white, who met regularly for potluck suppers. Shirley Passow said their goal was to rekindle the alliance between blacks and Jews that existed during the Civil Rights era, and more broadly, “simply to become glad to be together.”
Harry Passow taught at 成人抖阴 under four different presidents – Hollis Caswell, John Fischer, Lawrence Cremin and Michael Timpane – and after his retirement he received 成人抖阴’s Medal for Distinguished Service. During a recent interview for 成人抖阴’s Oral History project, Shirley Passow said of 成人抖阴: “It was a warm and happy place for all those years, and I can’t say goodbye.”
For those of us at 成人抖阴 who were fortunate enough to know Shirley Passow, the feeling was mutual, which is why we will celebrate her life and keep her in our hearts.
Donations in memory of Shirley Passow may be made to the at 成人抖阴.
Susan H. Fuhrman
President
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Published Tuesday, May. 29, 2012
