Ann Englander, who played an important role in early Chicago-area drug and alcohol programs, was a cultural omnivore who filled her East Delaware Place apartment with art, books and a pair of toilet-trained lap dogs.
Perfectly kept at any hour of the day, Ms. Englander held a doctorate in English literature from Northwestern University and was a discerning fixture at the city’s theaters, galleries and restaurants.
“Tall. Stately. Smartly dressed. Elegant. That was Ann,” said Margaret Sutton, a longtime friend who worked with Ms. Englander at Encyclopaedia Britannica in the 1960s and early 1970s.
Ms. Englander, 73, died Friday, July 7, of an aortic aneurysm in her Chicago apartment, said her niece, Catherine Boyce.
Ms. Englander had left instructions for her cremated remains to be placed in a cookie jar along with a chocolate chip cookie. Her wish has been granted, Boyce said.
As an administrative coordinator, Ms. Englander worked closely with Dr. Lee Gladstone at Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s first alcoholic-treatment program in the mid-1970s. She held the same position when the alcoholism program merged with the drug program. In 1982, she became deputy director for administration of the treatment center at Martha Washington Hospital in Chicago, which closed in 1991.
Gladstone, who died three years ago, is credited as one of the pioneers in understanding alcohol and drug addictions as medical and psychiatric problems. Colleagues described Ms. Englander as the organizing force behind his program at Northwestern.
“He was the front man and she made things happen,” said Mary Lou Petty, a social worker who worked in program development with Ms. Englander and Gladstone for many years.
Ms. Englander was born in Cincinnati. After her father died, she moved to Chicago at age 11 when her mother remarried Jacob Braude, a Cook County judge. She received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English literature from Northwestern before completing her dissertation on “D.H. Lawrence: Technique as Evasion,” in 1966.
She was a freelance editor and worked for Encyclopaedia Britannica from 1969 to 1973, serving as a senior editor for literature and arts on the Britannica Junior edition and later an associate editor in the same subject areas for the encyclopedia’s 15th edition.
Ms. Englander also was remembered for her intellectual curiosity and sense of style. Rooms of her apartment were filled with books dedicated to specific subjects–one filled with volumes on history, another with architecture and art journals–and she was never seen reading anything but serious literature. She loved Shakespeare and dismissed Dickens as “bombastic,” Boyce said.
Redheaded and given to bright red lipstick, Ms. Englander cut a striking figure, whether on her circuit of the city’s cultural institutions or while visiting friends in the country.
“I never saw her casually dressed,” said Petty, who hosted Ms. Englander at her Michigan summer home. “She was always immaculately made-up.”
“Porcelain skin, pristine,” said Donna Rietveld of Linda Fields Salon and Day Spa in the Seneca Hotel, where Ms. Englander had her hair done at noon every Friday. She was a welcome presence, able to talk about anything and filling the salon with an infectious laugh. “When Annie laughed, if you just walked in you thought, `I should have been here earlier,'” Rietveld said.
Ms. Englander was engaged three times but never married, eventually deciding she was more suited to live alone, Boyce said. But she had no shortage of male friends, and remained confident of her charms into her 70s, convinced that repairmen and others who visited her apartment were secretly in love with her, her niece said.
She doted on her two dogs, a bichon frise named “Boobie” and a Shih Tzu named “Sofie,” neither of whom ever went outside–she taught them to target newspapers in her apartment.
She also was devoted to her niece and nephews and their children, whom she lavished with oversized toys. Like her jewelry, such gifts were often bought during hours spent watching QVC.
“She wasn’t lonesome, never a person that was looking for something to do,” said her former brother-in-law, Dr. David Berkson. “She’s the only one I know who ever toilet-trained dogs.”
Ms. Englander also is survived by two nephews, Mike and Matt Berkson.
A memorial service will be at 3 p.m. Monday at Piser Chapel, 9200 N. Skokie Blvd., Skokie.
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ttjensen@tribune.com
