Izabella Wilczewska Van Raalte

Izabella Wilczewska Van Raalte

(1938-2025)

Izabella (“Izia”) was born in Poland just before WWII broke out. Several members of her family died in concentration camps, but she spent most of the war years at her grandparents’ country home, away from Warsaw. Her father, a cavalry officer, was captured and injured, then taken to one of the camps. Her mother eventually fled Poland and took her only daughter through Germany and Czechoslovakia in search of her husband who had miraculously been released from camp and sent to a hospital in Italy. Their small family spent a few years in Italy, then moved to England which became Izabella’s teenage home. She was boarded first at the Assumption Convent, next at Farnborough Convent School, then studied Science and graduated from the University of London.

From there, Izabella emigrated to the US where she started her career as a research assistant in biochemistry, working for eminent professors and scientists at the University of Illinois, Columbia University and the Pasteur Institute in Paris. While at Columbia University, she met her future husband who, after practicing law in New York City for a few years, decided to join the U.S. Agency for International Development. It was during her visit to him at his first post in Quito, Ecuador, that he proposed to her. They were married a year later in London, UK.

Their first assignment in the Foreign Service was Rio de Janeiro, which is where their daughter Mika was born. During the next 30 years, the family moved to a number of USAID posts overseas, including Jakarta, Abidjan, Washington, Cairo and La Paz, capped by two tours with UN-affiliated agencies in Vienna and The Hague. In each country, Izabella immersed herself in the local culture, joined the Embassy liaison offices, made many friends and collected local arts and crafts.

During their assignment in Washington, as a volunteer docent at the Textile Museum, Izabella started a collection of textiles that she and her husband expanded during their travels and which they cherish to this day. She worked for several years for an Educational Travel company, leading tours to countries of their assignment and elsewhere. She eventually became one of their star Tour Managers.

Travel has always been Izabella’s favorite hobby. She was happy pursuing it in retirement, as long as her health permitted. She loved playing and watching tennis, tending to flowers and gardening. She made new and loyal friends easily and impressed strangers instantly with her warmth and contagious smile. But throughout her life, her first love was her family, her husband Ray, her daughter Mika, and more recently and above all, her granddaughter Charlie.

Izabella died in Asheville, NC, on June 9th, 2025, after a valiant 7-year fight with leukemia. She will be buried in her family grave in London on July 14th. A Memorial in celebration of her life is planned for August 23rd in Princeton, NJ.

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