Photo courtesy of Andrea Kane Mitzi
Myers, who taught children’s literature, passed away
earlier this month.
By Teri H.P. Nguyen
Daily Bruin Contributor
Mitzi Myers, a respected UCLA lecturer and authority on
children’s literature, died from pneumonia on Nov. 5. She was
62.
Myers had been on medical leave from UCLA following a fire at
her Fullerton home last year, which left her with respiratory
problems. She had suffered second and third-degree burns as a
result of repeatedly reentering her blazed home in an attempt to
rescue her 35,000-volume library and her creative works and
manuscripts.
“It was like losing her entire family,” said her
sister and lone survivor, Patsy Myers. “Thirty years of her
life up in smoke.”
Born in Sulphur Springs, Texas, on Oct. 9, 1939, Myers developed
her love for literature at a very young age while her mother read
to her during the war, Patsy said. Her passion for children’s
literature developed during her graduate studies at Rice University
in Houston, where she met her husband, Dennis Hengeveld, of 16
years. He died in 1983.
“Authors of children’s literature express their
concern for societal problems, such as issues of war and violence,
economic stress and other adult problems throughout their
work,” Myers said in a Daily Bruin article dated May 23,
2000.
Myers taught classes in children’s literature at UCLA and
other colleges up until her medical leave. She helped collect
UCLA’s renowned Children’s Book Collection of American
and English juvenilia, which dates back to the 1700s.
A lover of children’s literature, Myers was well-loved and
respected by close friends and family.
She was a “delightfully, charmingly eccentric woman who
radiated intelligence, vitality and beauty,” said Thomas
Wortham, chair of the English department.
“She was a small, big-haired woman who was always carrying
a paper Japanese umbrella, but underneath the style, there was a
woman of substance,” he continued.
Patsy said her sister was brave and witty.
“She had an insatiable curiosity and impeccable
taste,” Patsy said . “She was a perfectionist who wrote
in such a unique way ““ so perfectly simple, and so
right.”
Losing what Myers lost in the fire was the most devastating loss
any scholar and academian could experience, Wortham said.
“But she didn’t lose her life work ““ it
continues through her students,” he said.
With reports from Daily Bruin wire services.