Obituary of Jocelyn Dax
Jocelyn Mari Dax, 65, died in her home in Delmar on Monday evening after a long illness. She was born in Yonkers, New York to Milton and Geraldine Saltzer and attended Lincoln High School before attending New York University. Following her father and sister, she studied languages, majoring in French and minoring in Spanish , which included a semester abroad in Paris.
Upon returning, she received a masters at NYU and worked as a copy editor for Oxford University Press’s French language division. In 1977, she moved upstate first teaching English as a second language at Emma Willard. She planned to make her career in teaching, but the results of her teacher’s exam took so long to arrive that she was forced to find another job in the interim.
She temporarily took a job with the New York State Assembly, and except for a brief stint at the Department of Health, she spent the next 37 years with the Assembly’s Ways and Means committee, finishing her career as the deputy budget director in charge of funding for New York’s public schools. Over the course of her career, she was a fierce advocate for ensuring funding was distributed equitably across the state and earned a reputation as a skilled and passionate negotiator.
In 1990, she moved to Delmar where she would live for the next 29 years. Over that period, she became a fixture of her community and her neighborhood perhaps best recognized when out for a walk with one of her standard poodles.
Throughout her life, she continued her love of travel. She returned to Paris with her son, and after he moved out West, she made multiple trips to visit him at the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and Santa Fe in addition to a cross country road trip from San Francisco back to Delmar. More recently, she traveled to Israel with close friends, but the beach remained one of her favorite destinations. Her annual trip to the Maine coast was always a highlight, and for Jocelyn, a perfect day started with a breakfast of coffee and pastries, a lobster roll for lunch, and more lobster for dinner each meal interspersed with long periods of reading a book on the beach.
She is survived by her son, Michael Dax and his wife Sullivan Peraino, her sister, Jill Wolder, her cousin Mark Lauren, her boyfriend Michael Kalogridis, and many close friends.
Friends and relatives are invited to call at the Levine Memorial Chapel, 649 Washington Avenue in Albany on Thursday, December 12, 2019 from 11am to 1 pm and are welcome to remain for a service which will commence at 1pm. Those wishing to remember Jocelyn in a special way may make a memorial contribution to the Mohawk Hudson Humane Society, 3 Oakland Avenue, Menands, NY 12204 or Friends of the Bethlehem Library in Delmar, NY
