Sheila Joan Randall

Randall, Sheila Joan NISKAYUNA Sheila Joan Randall, 88, died peacefully at her home in Niskayuna on February 3, 2022, due to pancreatic cancer. After being diagnosed in October, she took advantage of the palliative care services of The Community Hospice. This allowed her to spend several months at home with her soulmate and husband of 67 years, Harvey. Sheila was active for decades in Congregation Gates of Heaven in Schenectady, where Rabbi Matt Cutler described her as the matriarch of the congregation. She served in a wide variety of leadership posts, and she coached 13-year-olds on how to speak at their bar and bat mitzvahs ("louder and slower"). She created and led a support group for intermarried couples, which she recognized as a growing segment of the Jewish community. Her sense of humor and love of language was reflected in a cartoon she called to a visitor's attention a few weeks before her death. It depicted an office scene in which the boss was saying, "Let's cut through the gobbledegook and get straight to the rigamarole." Born Sheila Terkel, she was raised in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, the daughter of a college professor and a homemaker. She attended the High School of Music and Art, where her teachers discovered that she had perfect pitch. She graduated from Hunter College and met her future husband while they were both counselors for a day camp in the Bronx. After the couple married in Manhattan in 1954, they moved to Georgia, where Sheila taught in an elementary school and Harvey served in the Army at Fort Benning. The couple later moved to upstate New York. Sheila earned a master's degree in education from the University at Albany and taught reading for 23 years in South Colonie Central Schools. Sheila retired at age 55 so she could take trips with Harvey and close friends to two dozen countries including China, Israel, Japan and Russia. She was an active participant in Uncle Sam Toastmasters in Troy for many years and took continuing education classes in the North Colonie Central School District, including ballroom dancing, belly dancing and clowning. Her clown name was Polka Dotty, and she visited hospitals in the Albany area. She is survived by Harvey; her daughter, Margo Sue Bittner (Jim) and son, Eric; as well as four grandchildren: Kevin Bittner, Janet Walker (Joe), David Bittner (Krystle) and Julia Randall, as well as Julia's mother, Mary Ann. She was close with Jim's mother, Theresa, of Burt, N.Y. and Mary Ann's father, Jack Brennan, of Schenectady and Charlotte, Vt. She is also survived by a sister, Marjorie, who is developmentally disabled and lives in a group home in Monroe, N.Y.; her aunt, Edith Kahn of Washington Heights and her family; and her Long Island relatives, including nephews, Michael and Jeffrey Randall and niece, Debbie, as well as their children and their mother, Marilyn. She was predeceased by her brother, Sanders; and her uncles, Herbert Kahn and Louis "Studs" Terkel; as well as her parents, Meyer and Sophie. The funeral will be livestreamed at CGOH.org at 3 p.m. on Sunday followed by a private burial. One night of Shiva via Zoom will begin at 7 p.m. Sunday; a link will be on CGOH.org. Donations in Sheila's memory may be sent to Congregation Gates of Heaven or The Community Hospice in Albany. To leave a condolence message for the family, please visit levinememorialchapel.com.