As a bilingual school district employee and Palatine resident, Marta E. Davila helped improve the lives of Hispanics in the community.
On hand to translate English to Spanish or pick up truant children, Ms. Davila helped Spanish-speaking parents enroll their children in school and served as a district liaison.
She also helped start and lead a tenants association in her low-income apartment complex.
“If you needed help with school or a ride anywhere, she was the person to ask,” said Melissa Balderas, who grew up in Rand Grove Village apartment complex.
Ms. Davila, 69, was found dead of unknown causes Tuesday, March 23, in her home in Arlington Heights, where she lived the last five years.
Born in Puerto Rico, she was raised there and in Chicago, leaving school to help support her family after her father died.
In the 1950s she worked as a clerk for an insurance company in Chicago and then for the U.S. Treasury Department, filing canceled war bonds in its Chicago office.
She owned her own travel agency for a short time and took classes at the University of Puerto Rico in Rio Piedras.
Married and divorced twice, she and her four children moved to the Palatine area in the mid-1970s. She began working as a migrant recruiter for District 15 in 1979. During 20 years with the district, she worked as a teacher’s aide, clerk and community representative, helping those learning English as a second language both inside and out of the classroom.
As head of her residents group, she linked residents to service agencies and organized social gatherings.
“I remember them setting a projector out in the middle of a field and projecting a movie onto the side of a building,” said her son, Jean Paul Larrea.
Ms. Davila retired in 1999.
Other survivors include three daughters, Lillian Vargas, Dorothy Boock and Martha Larrea; a brother, Roberto Davila; two sisters, Annette Bewley and Sonia Oszakiewski; eight grandchildren; and 14 great-grandchildren.
Visitation will be held from 3 to 9 p.m. Friday in Ahlgrim and Sons Funeral Home, 201 N. Northwest Highway, Palatine. Prayers will be said at 9:30 a.m. Saturday in the funeral home, followed by an 11 a.m. service in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2035 N. Windsor Drive, Arlington Heights.
