Saturday, Feb. 11 — Eileen Hecht Levy, 93, a native of London’s East End who as a child was shipped from home along with thousands of other children to reside in countryside foster homes to avoid the relentless of Nazi bombing of London, and subsequently brought a buoyant, irrepressible spirit and optimistic, upbeat cheer to wherever she found herself, including most recently over two decades as an art teacher and devoted friend of the Falls Church News-Press, died early Saturday morning after a lengthy illness.
Levy was a frequent contributor to the News-Press, most recently providing children’s weekly Scalawag cartoons, and riding in many a News-Press entry in Falls Church Memorial Day parades and D.C. Pride parades, where she was an automatic magnetic hit with many hundreds along the parade route who rushed to her car side to greet and engage in her welcoming embraces.
Her stories of the struggles of a Jewish girl to survive and endure during the years of England’s war against the Nazis were an enduring source of inspiration to all who knew her. She came to America in the late 1940s to marry an American GI, Arnold Schollnick, and raise three children in Rochester, New York — Stephen, Gary and Janine. Later, she married a storied opthamologist, Dr; Chauncey Levy, and in the late 1990s moved to Falls Church to be near her daughter, an attorney who at the time was married to News-Press owner Nicholas Benton, and who has remained a loyal friend of Benton and the paper. Levy taught many art classes for the Falls Church Department of Recreation and Parks and local entities such as the Creative Cauldron and had many colorful floral entries in local art shows.
In declining health in her last years, she was under the care of her faithful daughter Janine and pup, Lili.
