Eileen Schwartz

Eileen Schwartz – wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother – passed away Wednesday, February 17, 2021, after suffering a heart attack nearly two weeks earlier. She was 92 years old.

The longtime Phoenix resident spent her final days at home surrounded by family: her husband of 70 years, Dr. Arthur Schwartz, two of her five children, and a handful of grandchildren. “You did good, baby,” her husband told her, bringing a smile to her face, before she drifted into a final sleep.

Eileen was born March 10, 1928, and raised in the Bronx, New York. After graduating nursing college in 1949, she treated a recently discharged soldier who was recovering from TB and they wed a few years later. They lived in Buffalo, NY, Long Beach, CA, and Oxen Hill, MD, before settling in Phoenix in 1962. Dr. Schwartz enjoyed a long career as a research psychologist at Barrow Neurological Institute, while Eileen raised five children: Amy, Andrew, Jainah, Beth, and Nancy, who preceded her in death in 2011 after battling a glioblastoma.

Vibrant and endlessly curious, Eileen evangelized the importance of family while building a successful career as a realtor and pursuing her many passions and interests, including tennis, playing violin with the Phoenix College Community Orchestra, attending local theater productions, the Arizona Symphony and chamber music performances, gardening, reading, cooking, grandparenting, and serving as HQ for news about her far-reaching network of family and friends.

She will forever be remembered as an extraordinary teacher, mentor, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, friend, and lover of life. Before she passed, she enjoyed a slice of homemade lemon cake and then declared “the party is over.” But the party didn’t end as much as she passed it on to her surviving children, 15 grandchildren, and 13 great-grandchildren. No memorial is planned. Donations can be made to Phoenix Chamber Music Society.