- Date Of Birth: May 24, 1938
- Date Of Death: May 19, 2019
- State: Pennsylvania
Anda M. Silhanek (Andie), 80, of Bethlehem, passed away peacefully on Sunday May 19, 2019. Born in Riga, Latvia, she and her family fled her homeland at the end of WWII when she was 5 years old and lived in a Displaced Persons camp in Germany, then emigrated to the United States when she was 13.
Five years later she matriculated to Western Michigan University graduating in 1960 with her BA with a dual major in English and Latin,. She went on to obtain a Masters degree in Classics from the University of Michigan. After teaching for several years in Michigan and New Hampshire, she spent the rest of career teaching Latin and English at Easton Area High School, where she developed a strong AP Latin program. She was a dedicated teacher who opened her classroom to the needs and concerns of each of her many students.
During her teaching career, she was honored with a Fulbright grant to study at the American Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and she also received a Rockefeller Foundation grant to study the journey of Aeneas so that she could draw upon those experiences in the classroom. Besides her devotion to her family and her students, she loved to travel. She organized student trips to Italy and Greece each year for 30 years. Her wanderlust took her to more than 40 countries and all of the United States. Upon retirement, following a vacation to Costa Rica, she established an English language program in San Josecito. She volunteered to live with a host family and teach English at the local elementary school for a year, thereby gaining a second family to whom she remained attached for the rest of her life. Her passions were travel, reading, learning and the arts. She was a dedicated member of the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Lehigh Valley.
SURVIVORS: Anda was the beloved mother to her son, Kent; daughter, Alison; daughter-in-law, Robin and grandsons, Connor and Grant.
