Anita Magistro Udell, 93, led pre-Arcadia's foreign language department

Anita Magistro Udell's father was a North Jersey shoemaker from a small Sicilian town.

Sicilian was the language at home, and so "she did not speak English until elementary school," daughter Ruth Kunstadter said.

But soon, still in elementary school, she was commuting from her East Orange home for piano lessons in Greenwich Village.

Living in three languages - and music is certainly a language - might have seemed quite natural for the youngster.

On Wednesday, Feb. 18, Mrs. Udell, 93, foreign languages department chair during a 34-year teaching career at what is now Arcadia University in Glenside, died at the Rydal Park retirement community in Rydal.

"She was a masterful, dedicated, and generous teacher whose keen intelligence and cosmopolitanism inspired students," Marguerite DiNonno Intemann said.

Intemann was a Spanish teacher who worked with Mrs. Udell at the Glenside campus, most recently from 1981 to 1990.

"She took students out of any provincial approach to the world," Intemann said, "and gave them a wide-ranging appreciation of the world."

Born in Glen Ridge, N.J., Mrs. Udell graduated from East Orange (N.J.) High School in 1938 and earned a bachelor's in French at what is now Montclair State University in 1943, after a year of study at Laval University in Québec.

Mrs. Udell taught high school French for a year in Netcong, before working as a secretary for a Wall Street financial firm and then for an import-export firm.

She studied at Teachers College of Columbia University toward a doctorate in foreign language instruction for elementary school students but left to marry in 1954.

She and her husband, Eugene, spent 1961-62 in New Delhi, where he worked with the education ministry while she tutored American expatriate students.

In 1963, Eugene Udell became the first dean at the Ambler campus of Temple University. In 1967, he became vice provost for student affairs at Temple and, after teaching science education, retired in 1985.

Mrs. Udell taught first grade at Plymouth Meeting Friends School before joining the faculty in 1965 at what was then Beaver College, teaching French and Spanish.

After retiring in 1989, she continued to teach part time there, her daughter said.

In retirement, she was coordinator of the Melrose Park-Elkins Park West Town Watch, was a volunteer at the Elkins Park Free Library, and was a phone receptionist at Abington Memorial Hospital, all in the 1990s.

She was a volunteer tutor in the Higher Achievement Program at Cheltenham High School from the 1990s into the 2000s, her daughter said.

And among her trips with the Elderhostel organization, she visited the Sicilian hometowns of her parents.

Besides her daughter, Mrs. Udell is survived by son Jon, a brother, and five grandchildren. Her husband died in 2008.

A memorial gathering for family and friends was set from 2 to 4 p.m. Saturday, March 7, in the social room at Rydal Park.

Donations may be made out to "Montclair State University Foundation," with "Anita Magistro Udell Scholarship Fund" in the Memo section, and mailed c/o Ely Santoni, Montclair State University Foundation, College Hall, Room 300, Montclair, NJ 07043.

Condolences may be offered to the family at www.helwegrowlandfh.com.

Editor's Note: This story was revised to correct the information for memorial donations.

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