She was my next-room neighbor junior year.  I did not know she had leukemia, so when she died I was all the more amazed at how solicitous she always was of my health and welfare, how sympathetic she was to other people’s comparatively minor problems, how interested she was in our concerns and worries.  Her death at such a young age made all the more amazing, too, her majoring in Russian and her efforts to overcome difficulties getting permission to stay and to work in the United States after graduation.  She evidently had decided to live life to its fullest,  to seek challenges in her life greater than the challenge of her illness. 

Sarah Shapiro