North Shore Death Notices: Dec. 13 To Dec. 19

The following death notices were added to funeral homes serving the North Shore area in the past week. Those homes have provided obituaries for some of those that have passed away recently. Patch offers condolences to their loved ones, links to their obituaries and notices of upcoming services below.

Seguin & Symonds Funeral Home, 858 Sheridan Road in Highwood and 11 West Belvidere Road in Grayslake

Barbara Ann Nanini née Brugioni, 75, Highland Park
Service June 18

Jean Souter Smith Leishman née Slater, 98, Grayslake
Service July 7

Amedeo Stefani, 78, Lake Forest

Rainy Alejandro Zamudio, 43, Cicero

Andrea Kayleen Nunez, 23, Chicago

Kelley & Spalding Funeral Home, 1787 Deerfield Road in Highland Park

Rose Katherine Cervarich, 97, Deerfield

Chicago Jewish Funerals, 8851 Skokie Blvd. in Skokie and 195 N. Buffalo Grove Road in Buffalo Grove

Mary Lewis née Medwedowsky, 99, Highland Park
Service Dec. 22

Bernie Glazer, 89, Glenview
Service Dec. 22

David Brussell, 69, Chicago
Service Dec. 22

Marilyn Freifeld née Hillman, 86, Evanston
Service Dec. 23

Gloria Rosenbloom Lipschultz née Fox, 96, Chicago

Harry Flaxman, 93, Chicago

Elmira Tsitron, 86, Skokie

Max A. Plager, 85, Highland Park

Paul Michael Prince, 82, Wilmette

Julian Levy, 81, Skokie

William J. Lyons, 75, Deerfield

Etta Loewenstein née Birenhak, 73, Chicago

Nancy Pearlstein Rosman, 68, Chicago

Donnellan Funeral Home, 10045 Skokie Blvd. in Skokie

Ana Nieves Powell Rojas, 91, Roselle

June Pauline Walsh née Liston, 91, Evanston

Jirair Krikorian, 89, Evanston

Joseph S. Kearney, 88, Glenview

Nancy Kron Sievers, 88, Wilmette

Gene Caylor, 86, Winnetka

Mary Louise "Marilee" Stepan Wehman, 86, Winnetka

Joe Simon, 85, Buffalo Grove

Evangeline “Vangie” Sanchez née Aguilar, 77, Skokie

Jane Dold née Hasse, 74, Evanston

Haben Funeral Home, 8057 Niles Center Road in Skokie

Margaret Betty Vogelmann née Pedersen, 100, Skokie

Geraldine S. Urhausen née Scarleski, 87, Lincolnwood

Beverley Ann Wallberg Compton, 84, Chicago

Joseph F. Hosman, 65, Evanston

Thompson Funeral and Cremation, 1917 Asbury Ave., in Evanston

Ramon Godwin, 65, McCullom Lake
Visitation Dec. 21, service Dec. 22

Velma Mae Veasley-Coleman, 90, Evanston

Marquita Nicole Arnold, 42, Evanston

Simkins Funeral Home, 6251 Dempster St. in Morton Grove

Patricia L. Alexander née Raymondi, 78, Niles

N. H. Scott & Hanekamp Funeral Home, 1240 Waukegan Road in Glenview

A. Charles “Ace” Realie, 99, Glenview
Visitation Dec. 22, service Dec. 23

Trevor O. Porter, 64, Des Plaines
Service Dec. 27

Helen “Happy” Gardner née Nagy, 98, Northbrook

Weinstein & Piser Funeral Home, 111 Skokie Blvd. in Wilmette

Zerna Bransky née Dubrow, 88, Shorewood, Wisconsin
Service Dec. 21

Jessie Lind, 102, Northbrook

Eleanor Beller née Berger, 97, Northbrook

Iddel Lashchev, 99, Chicago

Violet K Feierberg, 96, Chicago

Alfred Golub, 84, Buffalo Grove

Richard Burton Ross, 83, Highland Park

Bronislava Golub, 81, Buffalo Grove

James "Jim" Joseph, 68, Homewood

Igor Vitvilyuk, 68, Skokie

Featured Obituary:

Marilee Stepan Wehman, an Olympic swimmer, fifty-year Lyric Opera Women’s Board Member, and a founding Trustee of the Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Pilsen-Little Village, died today, December 15th at her home in Winnetka. She was 86 years old.

Marilee was born in Chicago on February 2, 1935, the first of seven children, to Alfred C Stepan, Jr, and Mary Louise Quinn Stepan. She was christened “Mary Louise” but always known by her nickname, Marilee. Her mother and namesake was a US National Champion freestyle swimmer and Marilee quickly followed in her footsteps.

At the age of 17, as a junior at Woodlands Academy of the Sacred Heart in Lake Forest, Marilee became the US National Champion and recordholder in the 220-yard freestyle. Between her junior and senior year at Woodlands, she swam at the US Olympic trials and earned a place on the 1952 US Olympic Team which competed in the Summer Olympics in Helsinki, Finland. In those games, Marilee was a finalist in the 100-meter freestyle event and won a bronze medal as a member of the 4 x 100 meter free style relay team.

Later in life, when interviewed about her early training as a swimmer, she remarked, “I was a student at Woodlands Academy. We had no pool, no coach, and no team. So, I trained with the boys at the Lake Shore Club in Chicago.” She would later become one of the first women and one of the first former Olympic athletes to serve as a Board Member on the US Olympic Committee and recalled in graphic detail the tortured deliberations within the USOC in 1980 that ultimately resulted in a vote to boycott the Moscow Summer Olympic Games after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.

After the Olympics and finishing Woodlands, Marilee attended Barat College of the Scared Heart in Lake Forest before marrying Richard Halley Wehman on June 18, 1956. After a few years in Texas, Marilee and Dick moved to Winnetka in1958 where they have lived in the same house for the past 63 years. They also kept a winter residence in Palm Beach, Florida.

While raising a family of four in Winnetka, Marilee worked as an executive producer at WTTW Channel 11, the area’s PBS affiliate, on a show titled Profile Chicago. She was also involved in launching the annual WTTW auction for which she was honored by the Junior League of Chicago as one of their “People Making a Difference.”

Marilee’s father, Alfred C. Stepan, Jr., was a founding member of the Lyric Opera Board of Directors and, as she followed her mother’s footsteps in swimming, she followed in her father’s footsteps as a pioneer of the Lyric Opera Women’s Board on which she served for over 50 years. When the current Lyric Opera Director Anthony Freud first joined the company, he was welcomed to Chicago at an event at the Wehman’s home where a cast from the Lyric Ryan Opera Center performed. Marilee was a keen and close collaborator with the Lyric Opera’s Director of Development, Mary Selander, and was instrumental in bringing her to the company more than 22 years ago.

Marilee also served as a Life Trustee of Lyric Ryan Opera Center for more than 35 years, and was a Trustee of the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, all positions that might appear incongruous for a woman who was an inductee of the Chicagoland Sports Hall of Fame, but were equally and genuinely embraced by Marilee as perfectly compatible dimensions of a rich, well-lived life.

Marilee further served on the Women’s Board at Northwestern University and endowed the Marilee Prize, a scholarship for underprivileged female athletes, at the University of Chicago. But in the category of supporting education, she was most proud of being the Founding Trustee of the Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Pilsen-Little Village Chicago. The 1996 brainchild of Marilee and her childhood friend, Rev. John P. Foley, S.J, (who, after 20 years in Peru was returning to Chicago to open a new chapter in his career and relearn his then forgotten native tongue of English), the Cristo Rey High School – which integrates four years of rigorous college preparatory academics with four years of professional work experience – now comprises a network of 38 schools across the country serving over 12,300 students of limited academic means.

Interviewed about Cristo Rey in 2009, Marilee gushed, “It is a brilliant concept. The students go to school four days a week, and on the fifth they work in a Chicago business and earn money for their tuition… Many of the young people are the first in their families to graduate from high school. Father Foley and I invited all the college presidents in the area for lunch, one on one, and asked them to give our students scholarships, partial or otherwise. They all said yes. Cristo Rey is the best thing I have accomplished.”

Send obituaries and images to your Patch to be included in future editions: Deerfield, Evanston, Glenview, Highland Park, Lake Bluff-Lake Forest, Niles-Morton Grove, Northbrook, Skokie, Winnetka-Glencoe-Northbrook, Wilmette-Kenilworth

Last week: North Shore Death Notices: Dec. 6 To Dec. 12