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This is how Vivian Folkenflik is being remembered.
The 83-year-old grandmother was in the crosswalk of a Montclair intersection when she was fatally struck by a pickup truck in broad daylight on Saturday, Oct. 28.
Folkenflik's death leaves a hole in the heart of several different communities. Her son and NPR correspondent David Folkenflik, paid tribute to his mother on Facebook.
"What made Vivian remarkable was not her shocking death but her life. She was marked by her incisive intellect, her profound caring for others, her drive to connect and her caustic wit," he writes. "She lived a long and full life with surprising and numerous distinct chapters."
"At 83 years old, she was so full of life and her mind was so full of scholarly curiosity that we expected her to still be around for a long time," Darina Ivanova also shared on Facebook.
A Brooklyn, NY native, Folkenflik was "was restlessly curious" about the world around her "and sought to cultivate connections with others," her son said.
She graduated from James Madison High School at the age of 16, then graduated from Radcliffe College before earning her master’s degree at Cornell University, with a concentration in French literature, according to her son.
Folkenflik met her husband, Robert, while the two were doctoral candidates at Cornell, David said in his tribute. The couple shared two children together, and Folkenflik would go on to teach at the University of California, Irvine. She moved to Montclair following the death of her husband.
Services were held at Bnai Keshet in Montclair on Wednesday, Nov. 1.
Editor's note: A previous and incorrect version of this story stated that Vivian Folkenfik had three children. The article has been updated to accurately reflect that she had had two children.
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