Obit of Zajac, Brooky Calhoun - Ottawa County, Oklahoma

Submitted by:  Gene Phillips  <okarchives@comcast.net>    29 Nov 2009
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Zajac, Brooky Calhoun

Brooky Calhoun Zajac suddenly passed away at age 85 on April 4, 2007, 
two months after the death of her son, John Calhoun Zajac. She was 
born in Miami, Oklahoma but moved to Pierre, South Dakota, at age ten 
when her father was transferred from the position of Superintendent 
of Indian Schools for the Five Civilized Tribes in Oklahoma to 
Superintendent of the Pierre, South Dakota, Indian School. She spent 
her formative years in Pierre, forming deep friendships that lasted 
her entire life and that made her into a South Dakota enthusiast and 
lover of its way of life. At the Northwestern University School of 
Speech she majored in creative dramatics and minored in education. 
She loved teaching her major to grade school children in the 
Evanston, Illinois school system. In 1953, she married her husband, 
Edward Zajac, in the Stanford University Memorial Church. The 
following year he accepted a position at the Bell Laboratories in 
Murray Hill, NJ. In New Jersey, the family settled 30 miles from New 
York City in the Morristown area, where Brooky discovered that art 
was her real passion. She took courses in almost all media, such as 
water colors, oils, acrylics, and etching, Some courses were at Drew 
and Fairleigh Dickenson Universities. Others were courses offered by 
the Morris County Art Association, which imported major New York City 
artists to teach them. She also developed her own medium, which she 
called "collage painting", done by the use of rollers to apply paint 
to Japanese rice paper that was then glued onto canvas. She was 
represented by several galleries and sold and showed her work widely. 
For three years, she was also Director of the art education program 
of the Morris County Art Association. She moved to Tucson at the end 
of 1983 when her husband left Bell Labs to assume the position of 
Head of the Department of Economics at the University of Arizona. In 
Tucson, she continued her art work but also became active in the 
University of Arizona Faculty Women's Club, serving as its publicist, 
on the Scholarship Committee and as Chairperson of the Advanced 
Spanish Interest Group. She was insightful, curious, fun-loving, and 
caring - qualities that were reflected in her art and that made her a 
very special friend to a wide network of persons. She will be dearly 
missed by all who knew her. She is survived by Edward, her husband of 
53 years, by her daughter, Bonnie Gill and granddaughters, Leah Gill 
and Katerina Gill, of Hobbs, New Mexico. A memorial service will be 
held at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, May 5th at the Skyline Country Club. 
In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to the Tucson 
Symphony Women's Association Music Education Fund, PO Box 42654, 
Tucson, AZ 85733. Arrangements by ADAIR FUNERAL HOMES, Dodge Chapel.

Published in the Tucson from 4/29/2007 - 5/1/2007.
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