Susan Kaufman Lapin

Susan Kaufman Lapin, 88, beloved wife, extraordinary mother, loving “Mimi” to her grandchildren and great grandchildren, and devoted friend, passed away on Monday, February 3, 2025, enveloped in the love of her beloved family. Though not immune to episodes of challenge and tragedy, Susan’s life was one overwhelmingly marked by happiness and gratitude. She was born on January 5, 1937, in Houston as the firstborn child of Jean and Albert A. Kaufman. When Susan was just 4 years of age, her father entered service in the U.S. Army and was away fighting in World War II for the next four years. Susan’s mother moved Susan and her infant brother, Stephen, into Susan’s grandmother’s home where the family lived for the duration of WWII. During the war, Al Kaufman rose to the rank of Colonel and Jean Kaufman took over and ran her husband’s casualty insurance business until Al’s return at the end of the war. Following the war, the Kaufmans bought a home on Underwood Drive in Old Braeswood where Susan grew up and watched the example of both of her parents who committed themselves to ongoing service to Houston’s Jewish and greater community by taking on leadership positions in many of the community’s religious and social service institutions. During her formative years, whether at school, at Trip Lake Camp, or at Congregation Beth Israel, Susan developed and nurtured a set of close friends whom she treasured and with whom she maintained devoted friendships the remainder of her life. Near the end of high school, Susan was introduced to Jack Lapin, six years her senior and a law student at the University of Texas Law School, and the two of them immediately fell in love. By the time she graduated from high school, Susan had determined that she would marry Jack. In an early demonstration of her unshakable resolve, while she was travelling with her mother on the train out to Oakland, California to begin her freshman year of college at Mills College, her mother’s alma mater, Susan informed her mother that she would stay at Mills for her freshman year and would eventually obtain a college degree, but that she was going to return to Houston after that freshman year and marry Jack. Indeed, Susan and Jack were married just weeks after Susan’s 19th birthday in March of 1956 and shared an unbreakable bond of love, companionship, and adventure together for the next 63 years. Susan fulfilled her promise of completing her college degree, attending the University of Pennsylvania, Rice University, and the University of Houston while Jack fulfilled his army service and then began his law practice in Houston. Following graduation from college, Susan devoted herself entirely to her family (with the arrival of sons David, Bobby, and Richard while she was in her 20s) and to supporting Jack in every way as he built a successful law practice and took on community volunteer leadership positions. At the same time, Susan took on her own series of leadership positions in the Houston Jewish community, including becoming the second Chair of what is now the Ann & Stephen Kaufman Book & Arts Festival at the Jewish Community Center. Like her mother, Susan combined her warm, welcoming nature with a mastery for entertaining friends and family in a host of memorable and generous ways. During the 1970s, Susan and Jack would host what became a family tradition of weekly “Sundays around the pool” during the springs and summers where dozens of family, old friends and newly-minted acquaintances would come to their home on Willowend Dr. each Sunday and spend the afternoons there enjoying bountiful supplies of food and games. In addition, Susan and Jack hosted Passover Seders for family and friends for several decades with the numbers in attendance frequently exceeding 50. Beyond that, regardless whether the celebratory event of the moment was Valentine’s Day celebration, Chanukah or even an Election Night party, Susan ensured that the dinner table was bountiful with food, decorations and fun. In truth, Susan was rarely happier than when she would plan and oversee a celebratory event for family and friends, reminding her children that the opportunity to celebrate life’s joyful events should not be missed. As satisfying as her family and community roles were to Susan, nothing in her life provided her with as much joy and happiness as her 63-year partnership with her beloved Jack. Together, they traveled life’s pathways as parents and grandparents, and they traveled the world as lifelong learners. Susan was, always, a present and devoted mother to David, Bobby, and Richard and, later on, generously shared that same love and support when her sons brought their spouses, Carol, Eve, and Jim, into her life. Similarly, her years as a grandmother to Lindsey, Lara, Oliver (of blessed memory), Elliott, and Alec provided Susan with countless opportunities for fun, laughter, and love which she treasured immensely. And, in her final years, when she was blessed with the gift of four great-grandchildren (two of whom were named in memory of Jack), Susan’s cup of happiness overflowed. Susan was preceded in death by her parents, Jean and Col. Albert A. Kaufman, by her husband, Jack, and by her grandson, Oliver Lapin, each of blessed memory. She is survived by her three children and spouses, David and Carol Lapin, Bobby and Eve Lapin, and Richard Lapin and Jim Nelson, by her beloved grandchildren and their spouses whom she adored, Lindsey and Andrew Phillips, Lara and Tim Chew, Elliott Lapin and Alec and Christine Lapin, and by her four great-grandchildren, Rowan, Cole, and Jack Phillips and Jack Lapin. She also leaves behind her brother and sisters-in-law, Stephen and Ann Kaufman and Maxine Lapin, and many treasured cousins, nieces, and nephews. A memorial service will take place on Sunday, February 9, 2025, at 1:00 pm at Congregation Beth Israel, 5600 N. Braeswood Boulevard, Houston, Texas 77096. The service will also be livestreamed at the following link: www.beth-israel.org/about-us/news-events-upcoming-events/livestreaming/. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made either to the Oliver Lapin Children’s Book Fair Fund at the Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center, www.erjcchouston.org/donations-giving/, to Congregation Beth Israel, www.beth-israel.org/giving/, or to The Stop ALD Foundation, www.stopald.org/make-a-donation. May Susan’s memory forever endure as an abiding blessing to those whose lives she touched.

Susan Kaufman Lapin

January 5, 1937 - February 3, 2025