Mara Rekis Anderson passed away September 6, 2022, at Landis Home in Lititz where she has been a resident for the past few years. Mara started her world citizen life in 1946 in a Displaced Persons camp in Dieburg, Germany. This was one of several DP camps where her parents, Alberts and Zenta (Rutkis) Rekis were given refuge after they fled their native Latvia and the advancing Soviet Army at the end of the Second World War. After several years in DP camps, under the sponsorship of Pastor and Mrs. Lebo and the help of St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Millersville she and her family were allowed to come to America and start a new life in Millersville.

Growing up in a family where German was the language of the DP camps, Latvian was the language at home and English was the language of school and community, led her to a life-long passion for language teaching and cross-cultural communication. As a second grader she remembered being surprised that her classmates only spoke one language. The refugee years in Germany seemed to be the predictor of her future as a teacher of German. Mara earned her Bachelors degree in German from Millersville University, a Master's from Middlebury College and the Johannes Gutenberg Universitat in Mainz and a Doctorate in Foreign Language education from Temple University.

Mara's language teaching career spanned more than three decades and three continents. Mara started teaching at Ephrata High School in 1968 and over the years besides, the traditional German classses she taught, she organized and taught a Survey of Foreign Languages and Cultures course to at-risk students. She also organized and chaperoned German-American Partnership summer exchanges to Germany for about thirteen summers. She served as head of the Foreign Language department where her students' high scores on national tests won them free trips to Germany. As not to favor only German, she facilitated a distance learning Japanese language program. For many years she organized and supervised student exchange visits with Ephrata's sister city, Eberbach in Germany, a relationship she was intrumental in establishing in 1976. Besides her 32 years of teaching German at Epharta High School, she was adjunct professor for Foreign Language Methodology at Millersville and after retirement supervised student teachers.

Mara's passion for World Languages, a term she preferred to Foreign Languages, led her to the other side of the world. Her impressive credential list also includes two Fulbright Fellowships, one to Japan and the other to Latvia, teaching language pedagogy. Her intense fear of flying did not stop her traveling to places to lead teacher training courses. Family members were familiar with the city of Wuhan, China before the pandemic because Mara had spent the summers there in 1983 and 1984 at HUST (Huazhong University of Science and Technology) teaching English to faculty who were preparing to study/work in North America and Great Britain. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 she hopped on a plane and joined the celebration which included her being interviewed on CNN.

Over the years Mara also had time to be involved in community activities. She was active in her neighborhood watch. She was a poll worker in keeping with her strong belief that everyone should exercise their right to vote because not everyone in the world has that right. Mara also helped the Lancaster Latvian Community with their humanitarian work with elderly in Latvia by collecting and buying needed items and on trips to Latvia she would visit with them.

She is survived by two sisters, Dace Eaby and Ilze Berzins and her long time companion Gerald Groff, her niece Sarah Eaby and nephews Karlis Berzins, Adams Berzins and Davis Berzins who will miss the pearls of wisdom she would bestow on them.

A Memorial Service will be held on Saturday, September 10, 2022, at the Charles F. Snyder Jr. Funeral Home, 3110 Lititz Pike, Lititz, PA 17543 at 11 AM. A visitation will be held from 10 AM until the time of the service. Interment to follow at Millersville Mennonite Cemetery. In lieu of flowers please support the Lancaster Education Foundation, 445 N. Reservoir St., Lancaster, PA 17602. On the memo line please reference, Lefever Memorial Scholarship.