Lorraine B. Dessler

1928 - 2021

Lorraine Dessler

September 12, 1928 - November 28, 2021

Lorraine B. Dessler (nee Hudek), 93, passed away November 28, 2021. One of three sisters, she was born September 12, 1928, and grew up in Manhattan. She started working part-time for a law firm while still in high school. Her starting pay was $1.00 per hour plus two nickels every working day to cover subway fare. She was skilled in taking dictation, shorthand and typing legal documents using the technology of the day – a manual typewriter and actual carbon paper to make carbon copies. Accuracy in typing legal papers was a demanding requirement because erasures were not allowed. In the 1950's she worked in the then new Airline Terminal Building on Park Ave and 42nd St. She lived about twenty-five blocks away and often walked to work. In those days air tickets were hand-written and propellers drove airplanes. This job had a nice benefit -- it allowed her free air travel.

She met her future husband Alexander Dessler, while she was volunteering as a hostess in The Soldiers and Sailors Club of New York. Alex was in the Navy and was visiting New York. He walked into the Club, saw Lorraine, and was smitten, she, not so much, but he was persistent and five years later they were married.

Lorraine was very smart. She was her high-school class salutatorian. While a homemaker raising children, she was a part-time student at Rice University majoring in Anthropology. She earned a Bachelor's degree, cum laude, in 1973 and a Master's degree in 1976 with a thesis on the "Secondary Linguistic Code of Air-Traffic Controllers". She especially enjoyed cooking. Lorraine wanted her children to eat meals that were both tasty and nutritious. She had books on nutrition and cooking that filled four bookshelves. She also sometimes traveled with her husband when he went to meetings, many of them international. One trip, with three small children in tow, involved living in India for three months, and then continuing to numerous countries on the way home, making it a trip around the world. Lorraine lived a long, busy, and productive life.

Survivors include her husband, Alexander Dessler; sons, David and Andrew; daughter, Pauline; granddaughters, Alison, Darien and Jamie; grandson, Michael and Alex; and two great-grandsons, Huck and River Needham. She was preceded in death by a daughter, Valerie (1957-2015.)