Adalee B. Schwartzman

Adalee Schwartzman passed from this life on January 6, 2019, at Potomac Valley Nursing Home in Rockville, Maryland. Lavonia Adalee Blankenship Schwartzman, who chose always to go by Adalee, was born on March 8, 1923 in Thayer, Missouri.

Her family farmed a small subsistence farm in the Ozarks. At 13, she moved to Denver, Colorado, riding the entire way perched on top of the family’s possessions, in the back of a pickup truck her father had bought by exchanging three horses for it. She loved the city, and always recalled her experience of junior and high school in Denver with great fondness. She came alone to Washington, D.C. at 19, as one of the “war girls,” taking a job fingerprinting at the FBI and attending USO dances at night.

She met her husband Marcus “Mac” Schwartzman when she made an appointment at his dental practice. They married in 1947, and lived first in Washington, D.C., and later on a farm in Rockville, MD, and then back to northwest Washington, D.C. Adalee Schwartzman earned a BA and MA at American University, in anthropology and art. She was an accomplished artist in media including water colors, quilting, and interior design. She was also an exceptional gardener. After Mac’s death in 2001, she moved to North Potomac, Maryland. Despite declining health, she continued to garden, quilt and read until shortly before her death.

She is survived by her sister Yvonne Christie; her children Joseph and Stephan; her daughters-in-law Nannette Ashley Schwartzman and Patricia Aufderheide; her grandchildren Jacob, Julia, Elias and Gabriel, as well as by extended family.

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