Wendy W. Bleakley

Wendy Bleakley, an educator and author who guided students for decades in South Florida, died Jan. 10 at her home in Sunrise. She was 78.

Wendy was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., to Phillip and Sylvia (Bardach) Wurtzel on March 26, 1947.

As a child, Wendy was drawn to classic children’s stories of loss and love, listing “Bambi” and author Felix Salten as her favorites in a sixth grade signature book from Public School 208. She dreamed of entertaining and acting.

The 1958 book, filled with precociousness and rhymes from her classmates, also included encouragement from her mother and father.

“Think straight, talk straight, don’t be afraid. Because you’ll know you are right,” Phillip Wurtzel wrote.

By 1961, she was considering medicine, inspired by a book about a doctor’s work in Southeast Asia. Soon after graduating from Brooklyn’s Tilden High School in 1964, the family moved to South Florida.

Wendy earned a bachelor’s degree in education in 1968 and a master’s degree in 1972, both from the University of Miami.

Although Broadway was far away, Wendy found new channels for creativity. In her first teaching job after college at Miami Jackson High School, she became the literary adviser for “Chrysalis,” a collection of poems and short stories by students.

She continued advising young writers for decades after transferring to Westview Middle School in Opa Locka, where she served as the librarian and media specialist. Later in her career, she took on an administrative role at the William H. Turner Technical Arts High School in West Little River.

Wendy also advised schools, some of which were in underprivileged areas. She was in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, for a school dedication on the day of the 9/11 attacks, and had no way to fly home after air traffic was grounded.

Wendy once recalled how she boarded a cross-country bus alongside many people and a smattering of livestock. The bus zipped around hairpin turns in the central Montagnes Noires range, eventually delivering her to Cap-Haitien.

The ride got a lot more comfortable after that — one of the people in the school delegation helped run Carnival Cruise Lines and hailed them a ride back to Florida on the line’s flagship.

Wendy relished her retirement, using it to travel extensively and see Alaska with her sons, Erik Slavin and Jamie Bleakley; she also trekked Machu Picchu and other parts of Peru.

In 2013, she flew to Japan for her eldest son Erik’s wedding to her new daughter-in-law, Natsue. She returned in 2016 for the birth of her granddaughter, Lana, and visited them later in Kaiserslautern, Germany.

Also in 2016, Wendy published the book “Wyngs,” a world-spanning, supernatural love story across the ages. It begins where Wendy did — in New York City, with 16-year-old Angelique, dreaming of her future.

Things do not always go according to plan, or her immediate wishes. But she lives a life of adventure and finds peace. As Angelique prepares to leave the human world and return to the life of a sprite, she closes her eyes and thinks these words:

“In the end these things matter most: How well did you love? How fully did you live? How deeply did you let go?”