Elizabeth Gale Fertik

Elizabeth (Wids) Gale Fertik died suddenly at her home in Oak Park, Illinois on November 28th, 2023. She is survived by her husband Philip Fertik, her daughter Harriet Fertik (Isaac Epstein), her grandchildren Saul and Gabriel, her brother Henry (the late Kira) Gale and sister Katharine (Shankar) Nair, her nephew William Gale (Xue Tan) and nieces Beth Jobman and Janaki Nair (Mark Guzzardo), and her great-nephews and great-nieces Ethan and Christy, Dan, Tim, Karissa, Savannah and Cassie and Saraswati and Ammini.

Born on July 9th, 1946 in Chicago, she grew up in the York Center Community Cooperative, a multiracial community in Du Page County, Illinois: the members’ varied politics included those of the radical party (and ex-party) left and the pacifist church of the Brethren. She was a talented violinist in her youth and a lifelong lover of music. She studied in the social sciences at the University of Chicago, where she met Philip, whom she married in 1966. She received her AB (1968) from the University of Chicago: her bachelor’s thesis was a micro-sociological study of conflict in the York Center co-op, which helped shape her critical understanding of social movements. The political scientist Nathan Leites accepted her for independent study on the strength of this essay. From Leites she learned principles of writing which she later passed down to her daughter Harriet (born in 1987) and which her daughter aims to instill in her own students. 

She did graduate work in sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, including field research in North Dakota on radical farmer movements leading up to the Great Depression. As she often did throughout her life, she had the wisdom to realize when the path she was on no longer suited her and the confidence to pursue a new one. She worked as a financial systems analyst and earned her MBA (1981) from the University of Chicago. To her husband and daughter, as well as many others, she was a model of independence and curiosity about the world. After taking early retirement, she found satisfaction and pleasure in her community, in music, and, more recently, in spending time with her grandchildren.

She was a person of strong will and great generosity. To say that she was devoted to her family and friends cannot capture the ways that she gave of her time, energy, and care without expectation of return. She built many lasting relationships with people who could have been simply acquaintances. Although she endured struggles with her health in her last years, these never deprived her of her sharpness and vitality. Those whose lives she touched will feel her absence always.