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When Evelyn Schreck joined the exclusive centenarian club six years ago, she continued to regale anyone within earshot with stories of her childhood and her long life. Last week, on November 6, Ms. Schreck died at the Westhampton Care Center, where she had lived for the last five years, at the age of 106.
Ms. Schreck’s granddaughter, Amy Stein, said “she truly had a wonderful life and was blessed with happiness and health up to the end. She brought so much joy to the lives of everyone that knew her. She had so much wisdom and joy and always had a positive attitude and a smile.”
Raised in Brooklyn, along with her seven siblings, and three step-siblings, Ms. Schrek’s mother died during the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed an estimated 50 million to 100 million people around the world; the flu also took two of her infant siblings.
A profile published in The Press in January 2017 noted that while she had a close relationship with her father, it was tough growing up without her mother.
“I used to go to my friends’ [houses] in the morning, and I’d see how nice their mothers treated them, and I’d go home and I’d cry because I didn’t have a mother like they had,” she recalled. “I had a terrible childhood because I didn’t have a mother. I didn’t have a mother to hold me, kiss me.”
She can still vividly recall sitting up late at night in the dining room of their home, waiting for her father to return from work so he could tuck her in bed. For most of her childhood, Ms. Schreck’s oldest sister, Sally, served as her surrogate mother; Ms. Schreck also had six other siblings—Charlie, Pip, Joseph, Teddy, Berdie and “Hi”—with Ms. Schreck, born on June 12, 1912, being the second youngest of the lot.
As she grew older, Ms. Schreck remained strong-willed and kept close ties with her family. When she and her husband, William, moved into their first house in St. Albans, Queens, and decided to start a family of their own, she immediately invited her sister Teddy, who could not have children of her own, to live with them, explaining that her sibling always wanted kids of her own. When her children were old enough, Ms. Schreck landed a job as a typist for New York Life Insurance, even though the odds were against her—her husband didn’t want her to work, she never went to college and she didn’t know how to type. As in most aspects of her life, Ms. Schreck persevered and, within two months, was promoted to the head of the department. Ms. Schreck still barely knew how to type, but her boss saw that she was organized and good at managing other people so she was awarded the promotion.
Always independent, Ms. Schreck lived on her own in Queens for eight years after her husband died in 1999. Then in 2007, when she was 94, she agreed to move into an independent living home in Great Neck.
She is survived by her two daughters, Rhea Kantor of Manorville and Karen Lambert of Great Neck; her grandchildren, Glenn Kantor (Nancy Vermont), Amy Stein (Larry), Alan Lambert, Marc Lambert (Roxanne); and six great-grandchildren, Lindsay, Matthew, Alyssa, Erica, Austin and Madison.
on Nov 12, 2018