Mary Schuster Jaffe

MARY SCHUSTER JAFFE
1917-2009
ITHACA - Mary Schuster Jaffe of 100 West Buffalo Street in Ithaca, New York, died Friday, June 26th, at Ithaca Hospicare after a four-month illness.
Mary was born on January 6, 1917 in New York City. Her father, Edward Schuster, was an international lawyer, and her mother, born Mary Merritt Crawford, was a pioneer woman physician and later a trustee of Cornell University. Mary attended Friend's Seminary, a Quaker school in New York City. When she was 16, she enrolled at Cornell University, graduating with a Bachelor's degree in Chemistry in 1937.
Mary traveled around the world in 1937-38, including an extended stay with expatriate relatives in the Philippines. Upon her return to New York, she enrolled in the Art Students' League to study oil painting and sculpture. With the outbreak of World War II, Mary returned to chemistry to aid the wartime economy. She worked at the Interchemical Company, becoming an early expert in electron microscopy, and took graduate courses at New York University.
After the war, Mary moved to Cleveland, Ohio to work as an inorganic chemist in the Lamp Division of General Electric. She married Hans Jaffe, a German-American physicist, in 1947. They had two children, Ann and John.
Hans Jaffe died in 1977, and Mary retired from GE in 1987, after 40 years of service and more than 15 patents. In 1995, she and her daughter, Ann, moved to Ithaca where Mary pursued both old and new interests, including watercolor painting, playing the recorder, and Tai Chi. Besides her son and daughter, she is survived by her grandson, Edward Molleson Jaffe; and many relatives and friends.
There will be a memorial service at the Unitarian Church of Ithaca, 306 North Aurora Street, on Saturday, August 1st, 2009, at 2:00 p.m.
In lieu of flowers, please send donations to Challenge Industries, 402 E. State Street, Ithaca, NY 14850. Arrangements are by the Bangs Funeral Home.