Daughter of Navy officer; served as nurse in Kuwait
Janet A. Turzak had lived all over the country, having grown up one of three daughters of a career Navy officer.
Consequently, in 2003, when her husband was dispatched to Iraq and the Middle East, with his engineering and construction firm, she firmly stood by him.
"I tried to talk her out of following me to the Middle East," Tom Turzak says. "But she decided to go anyway."
Mrs. Turzak didn't go along just to see the sights. She went back to work as a nurse, serving as head nurse at the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait, until the end of their assignment in 2005.
Her family members now are reflecting on her unconditional love and sense of service. Mrs. Turzak passed away Thursday after battling a malignant brain tumor. The Barrington Hills resident was 60.
Mrs. Turzak had lived on a variety of Navy bases as a child, including at the Naval Operating Base in Adak, Alaska, in the middle of the Aleutian Islands. However, when her father retired, he taught at the War College in Newport, R.I., where the family settled.
In college, Mrs. Turzak followed a lead set by her two older sisters and studied nursing at the Newport College of Nursing.
She eventually met her husband in Houston, where Mrs. Turzak was a surgical nurse on the scrub team for Dr. Michael Debakey, who performed the first heart transplants in the United States.
Later, Mrs. Turzak worked for Dr. Leon J. Daily, a fertility expert, who helped to open the Women's Hospital of Texas in Houston, which is dedicated solely to the care of women and infants.
Once the Turzak family moved to the Chicago area, settling first in Lisle and later in Barrington Hills, Mrs. Turzak again worked for the same cause, this time as an active member of the Barrington Chapter of the Infant Welfare Society.
Another organization that drew Mrs. Turzak's active participation was Save-A-Pet, the nonprofit, no-kill animal shelter based in Grayslake.
Mrs. Turzak served on its board of directors during the years when the organization purchased 10 acres of farmland in Grayslake for the construction of its new, 20,000-square-foot shelter.
She remained active with the organization through the shelter's groundbreaking and opening in 1996.
Besides her husband, Mrs. Turzak is survived by her children, Eric (Erica) Turzak of Bloomfield, N.J., and Daneka (Chris) Sorrow of Anchorage, Alaska; as well as her two sisters, Eileen (Worthy) Quereau of Lafayette, La., and Norma (Larry) Bard of Milton, Vt.
A celebration of life service for Mrs. Turzak will take place from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at the Marriott Chicago Northwest Hotel, 4800 Columbine Blvd. in Hoffman Estates.