Sylvia Sylvia

Sylvia Sylvia

October 11, 1939 - January 26, 2023

Activist, artist, educator and lover of laughter, Sylvia Previtali of Aptos passed away Thursday, January 26 in La Selva Beach after a long bout with dementia. Sylvia Faith Schultz was born on October 11, 1939 in the small, farming town of Decatur, Indiana, to a Lutheran minister and his wife. She was the fifth of six children. Poverty and discrimination against German-speaking Americans brought the family to Glendale, CA shortly after WWII. She was a self-proclaimed tomboy who loved climbing trees and playing softball. Sylvia was also a child prodigy on the violin. As a teen she became the youngest Concert Master of the Glendale Symphony and then got a music scholarship at Scripps College. After finishing her bachelor's in fine art at UCLA around 1960, Sylvia moved to San Francisco and joined the beatnik scene. A broken wrist from a car accident curtailed her dream to become a concert violinist, but she found a new passion, teaching, which led her to get a master's in education from USC.

Sylvia spent the rest of her career teaching mostly underprivileged youth with stints in Appalachia, Santa Rosa, Los Angeles and Watsonville. In Watsonville she taught Social Studies and Language Arts at E.A. Middle School where she applied progressive teaching techniques to help children of farm working families learn about topics that were often foreign to their families such as the college system, career choices, voting and their rights. Her goal was to equip students with the knowledge and confidence to make the most of what the United States has to offer children and young adults. If a student stopped coming to class, she would visit the family and gently convince parents and students that staying in school was the best path. The result was very high success rate of high school and college graduates stemming from her classes.

Sylvia met her first husband, Giovanni Previtali, in the mid-1960's at Ohio University where he was a professor of Romance languages and she was a teaching assistant. She was fond of saying they met in an elevator. After eloping and getting married in Reno, they settled in a small ranch house in Bennett Valley outside of Santa Rosa. They were very happy and had two children, but Giovanni's wanderlust and passion for writing got the best of them and the marriage didn't last. A single mother, the family of three moved around California for a few years and then settled in Aptos in 1983, shortly after Aptos was hit with a major storm system comparable to the one this year. The family thrived.

A person with a tremendous sense of justice and a staunch advocate of safety, upon retirement from teaching, Sylvia started a non-profit dedicated to making schools safer for students and staff. She supported the construction of Pajaro Valley High School in an alternative place away from its location near a toxic waste site and agricultural fields where pesticides are used. She also became a regular columnist on education issues for The Pajaronian newspaper and rekindled her passion for music becoming first violin for the Cabrillo College Symphony.

One of the very few survivors of pancreatic cancer, Sylvia found love again late in life and married Marshall Bautz in 2014. The last years of Sylvia's life were wonderful with Marshall, another devout lover of laughter. They were inseparable, spending time at her house in Aptos and Marshall's in Scotts Valley, visiting kids and grandkids, going to Gayle's and just driving around wherever their curiosities took them that day. Her time with Marshall was a wonderful crescendo to Sylvia's interesting life, a life filled with many challenges, but always with laughter, love, art, activism, optimism and never defeat.

Sylvia is survived by her husband Marshall Bautz, daughter and son-in-law Amanda and Ron Ward, son and daughter-in-law, Jon Previtali and Meghan Sheedy, and grandchildren Logan, Milena, Hudson, Oona and Jasper.

Funeral services will be later this year with the weather warms up. Please email jonprevitali@yahoo.com for details. Donations in memory of Sylvia can be made to the children's advocacy group CASA of Santa Cruz County at https://casaofsantacruz.org/donate.html.

Published in Press Banner · February 16, 2023