JANINA DANUTA ESTEP

1926-2019

Janina Danuta Estep passed away on September 4, 2019, in Houston, Texas, surrounded by family and friends.

Janina was born on October 14, 1926, in the town of Borislav, in the Galicia region of the newly-independent Poland. She was the only child of Jannes Dzwigala of Krakow and Daniela Ludmila Pourgouski of Lvov.

Janina’s father had gone into political exile when she was an infant, and Janina lived with her mother and her maternal grandparents. When she was 8 years old her mother succumbed to tuberculosis, the following year her father sent for her, from his residence in Brazil, where he worked as a civil engineer on the coastal canals. Janina made the train journey from Krakow to Warsaw, and then from the port city of Danzig to Rio de Janeiro by passenger ship, entirely on her own, and was never to see her grandparents again.

In Rio, Janina lived with her father’s American companion, Amanda Finch, while attending the Colegio Benet school for girls, where she was to meet several of her lifelong friends. During the summer and holiday breaks Janina and her ‘aunt’ Amanda would stay with her father in the small coastal village of Recreio.

In 1943 Janina received a scholarship from the Brazilian government to study nutritional economics at the University of Texas in Austin, and traveled there with her aunt, who became the Resident Associate at Newman Hall dormitory. It was at UT in 1945 that Janina met Lamon Hunter Estep, of Seminole, Texas, who was attending the University on the G.I. Bill, following his service in the Marine Corps during WWII. The two graduated together, both of them with Bachelor degrees in Romance Languages and Literature, and were married in St. Austin’s church (Austin) on December 23, 1947.

Their first daughter, Suzanne Annette Burton, was born on February 18, 1951, with a second daughter, Michele Jeanine, born on December 25, 1952, in Carlsbad, New Mexico, where Lamon was teaching school as well as serving as a tour guide in the nearby Carlsbad Caverns.

In 1955 Lamon entered the Foreign Service, and the family moved to Washington, D.C., where their third child, Robert Hunter, was born on January 11, 1956. Lamon’s first posting was to the American embassy in San Jose, Costa Rica, with subsequent postings as head of the visa section in Caracas, Venezuela, and as Consul General in Antofagasta, Chile. Throughout these postings Janina proved an indispensable assistant, as she was required to attend and organize numerous diplomatic receptions and engage in cultural and fundraising events, while simultaneously raising the three children, and, in Robert’s case, partially home-schooling him in her eclectic manner.

On their return from overseas the family lived in the suburbs of D.C. (Arlington, Virginia), while Lamon worked at State Department and the US War College. It was here that Janina, who, along with Lamon, had always been a keen aficianado of classical music, developed her lifelong love of ballet, attending numerous performances at Constitution Hall, and later at the Kennedy Center.

Lamon’s final posting was as chief of the political section in the embassy in Mexico City, and Janina, when she was not required to assist in diplomatic functions, would often travel to Austin to visit her children, who were studying at UT.

Lamon retired from the Foreign Service in 1980 and he and Janina moved to Austin. One of the great joys of Janina and Lamon’s life occurred on September 2, 1987, when their daughter Michele gave birth to Vivien Rose. Janina and Vivien were soon to be constant companions, delighting in each other’s company, with Vivien soon coming to share her ‘Babcia’’s passions for dance, fashion, and art.

Lamon passed away in April of 2007, and in 2012, Janina and her daughter Suzanne relocated to Houston.

In February of 2019 Michele tragically and unexpectedly passed away in Miami, and, despite the cruelty of the blow, it was an immense comfort to Janina that her granddaughter Vivien came to live with her afterwards.

Janina was beloved by all who knew her, and despite her lifelong shyness, was gregarious and filled with a generosity for, and an interest in, the lives of everyone she met. Her natural modesty belied an encyclopedic knowledge of music, art, film, geography, and literature, with a taste in music that ranged from Glazunov, Puccini, Ravel, and Chopin, to the Rolling Stones, attending multiple viewings of their concert film at Austin’s IMAX theater, accompanied by her daughter Suzanne. She continued to be a voracious reader till the end of her life, easily dispatching both the massive ‘Trilogy’ by Henryk Sinkiewicz, and the 7-volume ‘In Search Of Lost Time’ by Marcel Proust, when she was in her 90s. She was also a loyal supporter of the British Royal family, keeping an admiring and critical eye on their carryings-on.

Perhaps the thing which those who loved her will best remember will be her fabulous gifts as a storyteller, particularly those stories concerning her childhood and youth in Poland and Brazil. Of watching her grandfather fire an ancient pistol in the air to frighten away the wolves in the nearby woods, their eyes glittering in the wintry darkness ; of hunting for wild mushrooms in those same woods in the springtime, and how she and her grandfather came upon a gypsy encampment, and though she was frightened by the horses, their uncut manes festooned with silver coins, she couldn’t help but peer out from behind her grandfather’s legs the moment the violins came out, discovering for the first time the anguish and beauty of music ; of standing on the beach at Recreio with her aunt and waving as the dirigible Graf Zepellin II, sister-ship to the more famous Hindenburg, emerged from behind ‘The Island of Little Goats’, on its return voyage from Montevideo in the south ; of sitting in her father’s room as he recovered from one of his frequent bouts of malaria, reading to him from the Portuguese, English, and French-language newspapers, while he sternly corrected her pronunciation.

Janina was the personification of sweetness, grace, and unconditional love, and her family and friends will never stop missing her.

She is survived by her daughter Suzanne Estep, her granddaughter Vivien Hunter, her son Robert Estep, daughter-in-law Barbara Shreffler, and beloved caregiver Kathy Giles, who filled Janina’s last year with laughter and comfort and love.