WITH BRAINS AND HEART, SHE EMBRACED PEOPLE, BIRDS, POT

Ann E. Shapiro, 67, of Bloomfield, died April 27

Ann Shapiro was a woman of compassion and empathy who was direct in
talk and action. She was a pioneer in the field of gerontology before
it became as large as it is today.

Like so many other newcomers to the United States since World War II,
she had a challenging childhood. Her parents, Edward and Ilse
Freiberger, were Austrian. Her father had studied engineering and was
able to leave Vienna for England in March 1939.

His wife and their toddler son joined him shortly after the Germans
entered Austria. By that time, there were signs in the parks saying
"No Jews," and stores refused them service.

Ilse Freiberger worked as a housekeeper for a family with three young
children, and her husband, who was working at a factory, visited on
weekends. Ann Freiberger was born in London in 1940 in the midst of
German bombing, and Coventry, an industrial city where they moved, was
also under heavy bombardment.

One day while Ilse Freiberger was upstairs, a bomb shattered the
house, and she was knocked unconscious. The next day a neighbor
noticed that the milk had not been taken in and found her still
unconscious. Her children had been alone the whole time.

The family finally moved together at the end of the war to a small
town in the Lake District, where Edward Freiberger was in charge of
the electrical system. After he died unexpectedly, his wife joined
relatives in the United States.

The family arrived in Hartford in 1949. Ann began school the following
September. The other children considered her accent strange, but she
stood out academically and was eventually in all the advanced classes
in high school, said the Rev. Nina Grey, a classmate.

"She was pretty independent," said Grey. "She knew what she liked and
what she wanted to do." Both girls went to Hartford College for Women.

"She asked wonderful questions," said Grey. "She probed. She went
really deeply into things and found connections people didn't
necessarily find." After a sociology professor said people were too
bound by social convention, Ann and another friend wore a toga around
downtown Hartford, speaking gibberish. Two years later, the friends
transferred to New York University, and Ann graduated in 1962.

Before leaving high school, she began dating Mark Shapiro, a classmate
at Weaver High School. They met after she complimented him on the
exquisite sound of his clarinet after a school band concert.

He knew he couldn't be heard from the depths of the second clarinet
section but accepted the compliment. They started studying together.
After years of dating and separating, they got together in New York,
where he was in graduate school. They were married in 1963.

They were both interested in progressive politics. A group got
together in their living room and organized one of the first
demonstrations against the Vietnam war. Ann worked for the New York
welfare department and helped start a new union to represent the
workers.By 1976, Ann, Mark and their two sons moved to Bloomfield. She
became certified as a medical technologist but was looking for
something more meaningful.

She obtained a master's degree in gerontology from St. Joseph's
College and later a master's in social work from the University of
Connecticut. For the next 18 years, she worked for Jewish Family
Services, specializing in the care of older people, with the goal of
letting them live independently as long as possible. She also ran
groups for the children of Holocaust survivors.

"She had a great deal of compassion for people in a non-judgmental
way," said Leslie Gordon, a former colleague. "She was outspoken, she
was clear. ... She brought an understanding of people - [that] they
didn't have to be like her."

About 20 years ago, Dan Shapiro, her older son, was diagnosed with
Hodgkin's disease, a cancer of the lymph system. A friend said, "Chemo
is bad, man. Get weed."

The Shapiros had been very anti-drugs and weren't comfortable with the
advice, but Ann wanted to help her son endure the chemo, so she
applied her usual determination and her gardening skills to the task.
Husband Mark, a teacher, got the marijuana seeds, and Ann sowed them
inside a perimeter of sunflowers for camouflage.

The sunflowers didn't help. "We didn't know what we were doing, and
[the marijuana] grew to 10 feet," taller than the flowers, said Mark.

The couple didn't worry about legal consequences. "We decided we
didn't care. What could be worse?" Dan eventually recovered completely
and wrote a book titled "Mom's Marijuana" about the experience.

In the mid-'80s, Mark and Ann took in two young girls who needed a
place to live, and she became Antonette Colon's foster mother.

"She taught me ... that I could break the chains of poverty. She
helped me find out who I was," said Colon, who went on to graduate
from Smith College and became a lawyer. "She not only changed our
lives but the lives of our children."

Ann was an avid birder. She was president of the Hartford Audubon
Society until her death.

Ann loved her annual Thanksgiving dinners and would organize large
picnics on holidays.

"Ann was a big believer in celebrating life," said Donna Fuss, a
neighbor. "If you were at a cocktail party, and someone new walked in,
she'd immediately go up and introduce herself and make them feel at
home and happy. Everybody loved her. She was just a loving, kind, good
woman."

Ann saw her diagnosis of lung cancer 18 months ago as a signal to
engage life with even greater gusto. The couple traveled to Greece,
Brazil and Texas and continued birding. The Sunday before she died,
she spotted a rare glossy ibis.