Longtime Batavia resident, teacher dies

Marie Donovan Pitz, a resident of Batavia for over 70 years, was left with six dependent children after her husband died in 1960.

Although her teaching experience was at the high school level, she returned to the classroom to teach at Gustafson Elementary School in Batavia, in order to provide for her family financially. Throughout her career, she touched the lives of hundreds of Batavia children.

Mrs. Pitz died Sept. 13 at age 97 at the Michaelsen Health Center at The Holmstad retirement community in Batavia.

"She lost her father suddenly, too," said her son Paul of Wheaton. A physician, he was hit by a train on Christmas Eve, 1935, when Mrs. Pitz was 24. "Christmas Eve was kind of hard for her and my father was sensitive to that.

"Her parents had gone to Nebraska in the late 19th century to homestead," Paul Pitz added. "I have just a fleeting memory of my grandmother but she was tough, like a frontier woman. I think my mother had a good deal of that in her. She talked about having a well-rounded personality, not too aggressive and not too weak.

"She had a sense of exercising all the dimensions of the human personality," Pitz said. "She was loving and sweet and she was loving and firm. I haven't met too many people like my mother in all of my 68 years."

Mrs. Pitz was born July 3, 1911. She grew up in Springfield, Ill. and attended a convent high school. She attended Kendall College in Chicago and earned a degree in education from Illinois State University in Normal.

After her father's death, she moved with her mother to Batavia, where she was hired as an English and physical education instructor at Batavia High School.

Mrs. Pitz married her husband Bernard in 1939 at Holy Cross Church in Batavia, where she was an active member for decades. After her marriage, Mrs. Pitz was forced to resign her teaching position because she was a married woman, a policy unheard of today, but one that affected many women in her generation.

She raised her family in her home on Illinois Avenue in Batavia, where she remained for 60 years. She also lived in a townhome in the Georgetown development and later moved to The Holmstad.

After retiring from teaching, she continued to volunteer her services, including teaching English as a second language.

She was an avid bridge player and a painter of still life scenes.

In addition to Paul, Mrs. Pitz is survived by her other children Peter, J. Patrick, Philip, Penelope Fry and Pamela Sullivan, and by 11 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.

Visitation will be from 4 to 7 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 21 at Moss Family Funeral Home, 209 S. Batavia Ave. in Batavia. The funeral service will begin at 10:30 a.m. Monday, Sept. 22 at Holy Cross Catholic Church, 2300 W. Main St. in Batavia.