Amy M. Gitelman

Amy Margot Gitelman, age 47, died unexpectedly in Berkeley, California on June 29, 2010.
Amy was born in Durham, North Carolina on September 1, 1962. She was a graduate of Jordan High School in Durham, and a magna cum laude chemical engineering graduate of North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1984. She received a master’s degree in public health from The University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1991.
Amy is survived by her husband of eighteen years, Mallie J. (M.J.) Paschall IV, of El Cerrito, California, where the couple settled in 2002. He is a research analyst at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation in Berkeley, California. Also surviving are her parents, Dr. Hillel and Honre’ Gitelman of Chapel Hill, North Carolina; her brother, Dr. Stephen Gitelman and wife, Dr. Anna Bakardjiev, and their children, Jacob, and twins Sofia and Tobias of San Francisco, California; brother Daniel and wife Laurie and daughter Meagan of Morrisville, Vermont; and brother Philip of Chungbuk, South Korea.
Her enduring interests were piano and art. She studied classical piano from an early age, and also evolved into a jazz musician.
An interest in art began when Amy started painting with pastels. She was mentored by Patricia Young, a plein air artist, formerly of Efland, North Carolina. Amy was a 2000 Durham Arts Council Emerging Artists recipient, and was selected to display her work for the Chapel Hill Women’s Center’s 17th Annual Exhibit, Art “Through Women’s Eyes, By Women’s Hands” in 2001. She was strongly influenced by her grandmother, Belle S. Gitelman, one of the first women to graduate from the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester in 1923, who also was an artist specializing in oils and watercolors.
Amy will be greatly missed. She was a source of happiness for the entire family.
Donations in her name may be directed to the North Carolina Botanical Garden, University of NC at Chapel Hill, Totten Center, Campus Box 3375, Chapel Hill, N C, 27599-3375.
A memorial service in California will be held at a later date.