MARIELENA ZELAYA KOLKER

1926-2021

Dr. Marielena Zelaya Kolker was born November 16, 1926 in the historic heart of Mexico City, across from the Alameda, the most ancient public park in the Americas. Her parents were politically active professionals of Nicaraguan and Honduran origin, respectively, and her godfather was the philosopher and politician Jose Vasconcelos. A remarkable writer, scholar, teacher and public speaker, Dr. Kolker as a teenager won the lead in a production of Garcia Lorca’s “Mariana Pineda” at Mexico’s Palacio de Bellas Artes.

She adored her Mexico City teachers and her home city, and spoke of both lovingly for the rest of her life.

Dr. Kolker first lived in the United States in her mid-teens, when her mother, Concepcion Palacios, MD, went to Germany with U.S. military forces to provide medical treatment for concentration camp survivors. Enrolled by Dra. Palacios at Philadelphia’s Friends Select School, Dr. Kolker gained a lifelong admiration for the goals and culture of Quakers. After graduating, she earned degree at Mexico City College. An award-winning educator whose students kept in touch for decades, she would go on to teach Spanish literature as a visiting professor at institutions including Tufts University, Brandeis University, American University, the University of Maryland, and

George Mason University.

While working on her degree in Mexico City, Dr. Kolker also wrote and starred in award-winning programs for the nascent TV industry, often alongside her dear friend, actress Judy Ponte.

Later, invited by her former teachers, Dr. Kolker returned to the U.S. to earn a literature degree at the University of Maryland. There, on the first day of botany class, she met the love of her life, future psychiatrist Jonas Cohen Kolker. Their romance would last throughout seven years of courtship and 40 years of marriage, infusing their children with the conviction that ideas and humans thrive by contact between unfamiliar worlds.

To visit each other during their studies, Dr. Kolker and her then-sweetheart, the future Dr. Jonas Kolker, took the bus between Mexico City and Baltimore. A gifted teacher throughout her career, Dr. Kolker later taught her husband the structure of Spanish on the back of a cocktail napkin. Both liked to speculate about the city streets where they might have crossed paths in another era: their favorite guesses were Madrid, Rome and Jerusalem.

Dr. Kolker was cherished and treated as a kinswoman by her Jewish in-laws Rebecca Kolker, Jeannette Shofnos, Gloria Kolker Hack and especially her motherin-law

Lydia Kolker Cohen. It was Ms. Cohen who urged Dr. Kolker, after a long hiatus during which Kolker accompanied her husband to Japan and raised their family in Chevy Chase, Maryland, to complete her doctorate at the University of Maryland.

Shortly afterward, in 1985, Dr. Kolker’s book “Testimonios Americanos de los Escritores Espanoles Transterrados de 1939,” was published in Spain. The work, examining the writers and intellectuals exiled after the Spanish Civil War, is recognized today as an important reference for scholars.

Dr. Kolker’s personal interests ranged from the scholarly to the more mundane. In her later years an average day might involve reading Don Quixote aloud with her grandchildren, leading a discussion on Mexican political culture with her devoted book club, then retiring for the evening to a preferred telenovela. She would approach each encounter with equal seriousness.

As a personality, Mrs

Kolker was uncommonly brave and level-headed when faced with grave dangers such as natural disasters, car accidents or heart surgery. At the same time, she could be confounded by life’s more ordinary challenges, insisting, for example, on arranging her vast library according to the Dewey decimal system and engaging in regular psychological combat with malicious local squirrels who hijacked the birdfeeder in which she

took so much joy.

Dr. Kolker loved gardens and turned her own yard into an Eden-like oasis that gave her endless diversion and happiness. That same deep pleasure in interacting with birds and plant life could extend the simplest walk around the block into a lengthy odyssey of everything from oak appreciation to savoring the perfume of sage plants, always with a contagious smile of revelation at nature’s gifts.

In her later years, Dr. Kolker had two Italian Greyhounds, Cleopatra (now deceased) and, later, Carlota, with whom she shared an extraordinarily loving bond. Whenever Dr. Kolker took a seat during the day or reclined for the night, one of these would soon be nestled beside her, conforming pillow-like to whatever shape was demanded by Mrs Kolker’s own position and activity. Seldom have a dog and an owner shared such a clear and comforting devotion.

Most of all, Dr. Kolker’s love and interest were dominated by her family, whose lives, adventures, and dramas were principal in Dr. Kolker’s every living day.

Dr. Kolker prepared sumptuous dinners for her beloved husband Jonas and their four children every night for decades, even while writing her doctoral dissertation and teaching university classes. She retained the healthful menus and eating habits of her native Mexico City, which meant that food

was not only healthful, but also visually beautiful and delicious. Long before it was popular, Marielena eschewed sugar, junk food, additives, and canned foods. She opted for fresh fruits and vegetables, homemade corn tortillas, and mouth-watering dishes like chilaquiles, a type of casserole made with layers of chopped tomatoes, tortillas, green tomatillos and cotijo cheese. (Rumor has it, however, that one of her children once bribed a school friend to bring over a box of Pop Tarts from her family’s more standard-diet American kitchen).

From her mother-in-law Lydia Kolker Cohen, Dr. Kolker also learned how to set a beautiful table with a centerpiece overflowing with grapes, apples, walnuts and flowers, with silver Shabbat candlesticks on either side. On Christmas Eve, Dr. Kolker lovingly prepared a festive dinner which featured a traditional Mexican Christmas salad made with beets, orange slices, peanuts, and pomegranate seeds, a dish that appears on family members’ menus well into the 21st century.

A feminist and advocate for all people’s rights to flourish, Dr. Kolker drove her children to marches in Washington promoting the Equal Rights Amendment and ensured that each had private space including a desk from an early age. A riveting conversationalist with a near-photographic memory, she could argue the relative merits of members of the royal lineage of Spain and cite the evidence of Jewish heritage in the life of Cervantes.

After moving to Houston in 2004 to live near grandchildren, Dr. Kolker applied a similar passion to life in Montrose. Having first passed through Texas as a young woman – when she witnessed an El Paso bus driver making Mexican passengers move to back of the bus as they entered the U.S. – Dr. Kolker left behind her a Houston where she was celebrated as a tutor at the local public school, where children of all ethnicities learned to be effortlessly bilingual.

Above all, Dr. Kolker loved to inspire – and in turn inspired love. Her family is grateful for the tender care in recent years by Jorge Leal, Daniela Rodriguez, Angeles “LaLa” Valdez, Denisse Rodriguez, Norma Pinto and Maria Rodriguez. They are also thankful for the lively, tender, 15 year friendship of Elena Vega and Dr. Kolker’s cherished book club.

She leaves behind her children, Luisa, Adam, Claudia and Jason; daughter-in-law Julie Wolf; and grandchildren Daniel Kolker Murphy, Jonas and Clara Kolker, and Anna and Elliot Kolker Stravato.

To share the causes that

Dr. Kolker championed, in lieu of flowers please donate to Amnesty International, the ACLU or the PTO of Wharton Dual Language Academy.