Victor Albert Shriro VITLIN

1949 - 2015

VITLIN, Victor
Albert Shriro
Victor Albert Shriro Vitlin died on May 19, 2015 in San Francisco, California after a long and determined battle against the melanoma that ultimately defeated him. He is survived by his wife of 30 years, Annag Chandler, by their daughter Catherine and her husband, Jithun Nair, and by their son, Matthew, and his wife Katherine. A resident of Austin, Texas, he still maintained business and real estate interests in San Francisco. He was 65 years old.

Victor was born on December 1, 1949, in New York City. His parents were John Alexander Shriro Virlin and Mina Abramovna Zeltzer Vitlin, then recently arrived in the United States after surviving World War II in Shanghai. Since the lingua franca in his home was Russian, Victor was fond of saying that any grammatical errors in his English were understandable since it was, after all, his second language.

Soon after Victor's birth, the family moved to the Bay Area to become business partners with Mark Ross, another member of the Russia-by-way-of-China group of San Franciscans who made a considerable impact on the business community here. With family and business contacts throughout much of Asia and Australia, they built Mark Ross International and Global Merchandising Corp. into thriving business ventures that survive to this day and now provide fresh challenges to the Vitlins and their valued business partner, James Connell, who himself is part of the second generation of his family to make its mark at Global Merchandising.

Victor graduated with honors from UCLA, and then went on to graduate from Harvard Law School, where he met his wife. They married in 1984, and after several years in the legal trenches doing transactional corporate and real estate work (and acquiring a graduate degree in taxation from N.Y.U. School of Law), he gradually shifted the focus of his work to fostering the business and real estate concerns in which his family was involved.

Providing for his family's well being -- with a particular emphasis on education -- was his chief concern. He felt very keenly that as a parent it was incumbent upon him to leave his family with more financial stability and security than he received from his parents.

His funeral was held on Friday, May 22nd at 12:30 pm in the chapel of the Home of Peace Cemetery, 1299 El Camino Real, Colma. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests that any donations be directed to The Leukemia And Lymphoma Society, particularly their South Texas Chapter, at 8001 Centre Park Dr., Ste. 150, Austin, TX 78754, or The Melanoma Research Foundation, 1411 K Street NW, Suite 800, Washington, D.C. 20005.

His spirit never gave up, but his body failed before his spirit could find the means to defeat his foe. He will be remembered for his perseverance, for his memory and intelligence, for his delight in all of the stories and history of his far-flung family, and for his sheer unfettered joy whenever he could pack a bag and go travelling. And given his love of travelling, we will remember him with the verse by Edna St. Vincent Millay:

My heart is warm with friends I make, And better friends I'll not be knowing, Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take, No matter where it's going.