Alice Jo Lichtman Obituary

Los Angeles - Lichtman, Alice Jo Maisel, age 88, peacefully, on September 16. Beloved wife, mother, grandmother, sister, aunt, great aunt, cousin and friend. Born in Buffalo, New York in 1937, at the age of 17 she met Marshall A. Lichtman, her husband of 68 years. She attended Wellesley College. Alice Jo and Marshall moved to Rochester, NY where they spent the next 60 years, until they moved to Los Angeles in 2018. They had three daughters and once they entered grade school, Alice Jo entered graduate school. One of only two women in her class, she received a Master's Degree in Computer Science from the Rochester Institute of Technology and in recognition of her subsequent career and contributions to the field, she was later named A Distinguished Alumna. Following graduation, she entered the field of software design and consulting and spent her career developing custom software packages and programs for numerous Fortune 500 companies. In the late 1970s, computer software development was almost exclusively a man's world. Women were just beginning to enter the computer science field and she enjoyed the chance to mentor other young women. After her retirement, she and Marshall created an endowment to support RIT's Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences Program for Women in Computing. Alice Jo led an ordinary while absolutely extraordinary life. She had an exciting and accomplished career, but family was everything to her. Before it was fashionable to talk about balancing career and family, she did it seamlessly. Alice Jo and Marshall were the happiest, most devoted couple. Their home was filled with limitless love, support and encouragement. The poet Wordsworth said "the best portion of a man's [sic] life is little nameless unremembered acts of kindness and love." Those moments were continuous; she must have spent all day long answering the calls of her daughters, sons-in-law and grandsons. She was an interested and compassionate listener who knew every detail of her kids and grandkids' daily lives, always the one everyone turned to for sage and practical advice and support.Alice Jo was predeceased by her son-in-law Jose Ignacio Uriarte Fuenzalida. She is survived by her husband Marshall, her daughters and son-in laws, Susan, Joanne, Douglas Evans, Pamela, and Edward Michael Reading, her seven grandsons, Ignacio, Sebastian, Andres, (Nicole Gokcebay Uriarte), Samuel, Jesse, Alexander, and Azrael, her sister Joan Leiman, her niece Elizabeth Leiman Kraiem, her nephew Alan Leiman, and her great niece and nephews.