Maija May Obituary

May, Maija

Maija Bajars May was born Maija Baltins in Riga, Latvia on March 4, 1939. She and her family fled the Soviet reoccupation of Latvia in 1944, living as displaced persons in Germany for five years before emigrating to the United States in 1949; she became a U.S. citizen in 1955. In 1961 she graduated with highest honors from Swarthmore College, where she met her husband J. Peter May; they were married in 1963. She received a Ph.D. in French literature from Johns Hopkins University in 1969 after completing her dissertation Compte d'Argental: a magistrate in the literary world. After teaching French for a few years at the University of Chicago, she earned her Master of Library Science at the University of Chicago Graduate Library School in 1974. She worked at the Erikson Institute, first as librarian and later archivist, from 1975 - 2008. Family, friends and neighbors remember her wicked sense of humor, her wide-ranging knowledge and passion for literary and scholarly reading, her many letters and unpublished memoirs, and her gift for languages (she was fluent in Latvian, French, English, and German, in addition to reading Russian, Italian, Latin and Sanskrit). She also studied and practiced a variety of arts and crafts, including painting, drawing, weaving, sewing and knitting. She passed away on October 18, 2021, and is survived by her husband of 58 years, J. Peter May; sons Anthony and Andrew May; grandchildren Amber Strange-May and Cy May; great-grandchildren Skyler and Arabella Strange-May; and her sister Ilse DiMeglio.

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