Carolyn B. Schlak

Carolyn was born in New Orleans on November 23, 1938, to Margaret and Robert Brandt. She graduated from Sacred Heart High School and from Loyola University in New Orleans before traveling to Spain where she spent a year at Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She came home to enter graduate school at the University of Colorado in Boulder where she met and married Gerard Schlak, a fellow graduate student. She had her first two children while completing her PhD in Spanish Literature.

After graduation, she and her husband moved their young family to Dallas where she taught at the University of Dallas until her third child arrived and she became a full time mother. When her children were all attending school, she joined the faculty of St. Mark’s School of Texas where she taught in the Spanish Department until she retired. Her love of teaching led her to accept an offer to teach in the Spanish Department at Southern Methodist University until she really did retire from teaching in 2003.

Her love of Spanish literature and art led her to serve for many years as a docent at the Meadows Museum where she was recently recognized as a Docent Emeritus. Her ever-present compassion for the less fortunate led her to serve as a volunteer for many years at North Dallas Shared Ministries as well as the St. Rita Conference of the St. Vincent DePaul Society.

Throughout her life, she was devoted to her family and spent many hours at numerous club meetings and a variety of sporting events and everywhere else her children were interested in being involved. Her involvement with her family continued and grew as her family grew. She loved spending time with her ten grandchildren and visited them wherever they were whenever she could.

She is survived by her sister Judith Brandt, her husband of 58 years, Gerard Schlak, her three children, Gretchen Boudreaux, Gregory Schlak and Robert Schlak, and her ten grandchildren Brandt, Danielle, Louis and Phoebe Boudreaux, and Michael, Christopher, Anthony, Sophia, Matthew and Nicholas Schlak.

Viewing will be at Calvary Hill on September 26 from 4 pm to 7 pm. Her funeral Mass will be at St. Rita Catholic Community on September 27 at 11:00 am. A reception will follow in the church Commons. Interment at Calvary Hill will be at 3:30 pm. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to North Dallas Shared Ministries or the St. Rita St. Vincent DePaul Society.