Shirin Akbar Qadir

Shirin Akbar Qadir, of West Bloomfield, Michigan, passed away on May 11, 2025 at the age of 74 after a battle with metastatic cancer. She was born in Pakistan on December 18, 1950, then married and immigrated to the United States in 1979, where she had three children. She was a strong, generous, colorful woman with a resilient and fiercely independent spirit. Education was a fundamental part of her life - she graduated from Saint Mary's College in 1987, while her children were all under the age of 8. When she subsequently became a single mother, she helped put her children through college (Columbia, Johns Hopkins, and Princeton), two of whom went on to become physicians, and the other a software engineer. She had multiple pursuits later in life, including owning small businesses, working as a linguist for the U.S. military, obtaining her MBA in 2020 at the age of 69, and was nearing completion of her PhD at the time of her passing. While her legacy will live on through her children, she will also be remembered for her tenacity, giving nature, gregarious personality, sharp sense of humor, and strong faith in God. She is preceded in death by her son Rehmat Ali Qadir, and is survived by her daughter Nida Qadir, son Rabah Qadir, their spouses Jonathan Westfield and Ximena Vanegas Qadir, and grandchildren Norah and Benjamin Qadir. She was laid to rest on Wednesday, May 13, 2025, at Knollwood Memorial Park in Canton, MI. Shirin loved to feed people, so the family invites donations in her name to the World Central Kitchen (https://wck.org/).