Esther M. Lafair, 86, retired Penn secretary with a knack for words

Esther M. Lafair, 86, formerly of Wynnefield, a retired secretary in the department of criminology at the University of Pennsylvania, died Sunday, July 2, of kidney disease at the home of her sister in Merion, where she had been living for the past five months.

Ms. Lafair was the longtime executive secretary to professor Marvin E. Wolfgang, a leading criminologist at Penn and an internationally known figure who invented a way for academicians to look at and quantify crime.

While working with Wolfgang from the 1970s to the mid-1990s, Ms. Lafair enrolled at Penn part-time, and eventually earned a magna cum laude bachelor's degree in the humanities.

After leaving Penn in the 1990s, Ms. Lafair took a paid position with the Urban Tree Connection, a West Philadelphia nonprofit that helps neighborhood residents convert vacant lots into community gardens. She retired for good in the early 2000s.

A logophile — one who loves words — Ms. Lafair had a knack for linguistics. She developed skills for assisting academicians and writers, contributing to the New Dictionary of American Slang, edited by Robert C. Chapman, and to books on English usage by William Safire and Edwin Newman.

Ms. Lafair served as a research technician and editorial assistant to dentists Ted Rothstein and Cecile Yoon-Tarlie, co-authors of a scholarly paper entitled "Malocclusion in Children from Ten to Fourteen." The article appeared in the American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics in March 2000.

Ms. Lafair was a life member of Hadassah and a founding member of the Suburban Jewish Community Center-Bnai Aaron on Mill Road in Havertown, and was active in its sisterhood in the 1950s and 1960s.

As a volunteer for Jewish Family and Children's Services, she did grocery shopping for those unable to leave home and made a series of weekly phone calls to check on shut-ins.

"She was an unusual combination of devotion to ideas and very down-to-earth in her devotion to helping others, like helping someone cross the street," said her daughter, Eleni Zatz Litt. "She wasn't a showy person, but she was very giving and loving."

Born in Philadelphia to Isadore and Clara Lafair, she was a graduate of Overbrook High School. She was married to Leonard Zatz. The couple divorced in the 1960s. He died in 2013.

Besides her daughter, Ms. Lafair is survived by seven grandchildren; six great-grandchildren; and a brother and sister. A son, Mark Lafair Zatz,  died earlier.

Services were Wednesday, July 5.

Ms. Lafair asked that in her memory, acts of loving kindness be performed.

Memorial donations may be made to the Perelman Jewish Day School, 49 Haverford Rd., Wynnewood, Pa. 19096. The contributions are earmarked to enhance Mark Park, a meditation garden on the grounds of the Perelman School in memory of Ms. Lafair's son. Donations also may be made to the Har Zion Temple Sisterhood, Floral Fund, Har Zion Temple, 1500 Hagys Ford Rd., Penn Valley, Pa. 19072.

This obituary has been changed to correct the name of Ms. Lafair's husband's family.