Home About Mission & Vision What We Do Who We Are Contact Us Apply Application Requirements Apply Now Get Involved Become a Mentor Ways to Donate Wild Gift Memorials Network About the Network Meet Wild Gift Leaders Links
Wild Gift Memorials We dedicate this page to investors who want to support Wild Gift in honor or in memory of a family member, spouse, or friend. Please provide us a photo, biographical capsule, and a memorial tribute of a half-page or less.

Winnie Tarakajian Chobor

Winnie had three loves – teaching, her husband and life.
The first was dedicated to her ‘children’, a generation of high school mathematics students.  She guided them through probability theory and calculus with a ‘can-do’ enthusiasm that made students listen.  “You can be anything and do anything” was her mantra, a message she especially touted to girls.

Winnie’s vivaciousness, tribute to an Armenian/Irish heritage and  ‘laughing energy’, struck all she knew.  A natural born performer, she played the guitar, piano and sang.  And with her belly dancing quite literally shed the image of a teaching marm.  Winnie entertained many in this exotic, yet exquisite art.  Among her appreciative audiences was the famous science fiction writer, Isaac Asimov, whom she befriended. 

Outdoor adventure, especially on wild waters, was another siren.  In mid-life, on a rafting trip down the Colorado River, she met Joe Chobor.  They became inseparable.  “Winjo” dreamed the same dreams and shared the same passions, hiking, kayaking and rafting together in locations as diverse as Alaska, Nova Scotia and the Adirondacks.  To hear Joe rhapsodize about Winnie, seven years after she was stolen away by ovarian cancer, you know an eternal flame has been lit in his heart. 

Joe sows tribute far and wide to his lost love.  With coins tossed to the spirits in those places they camped, paddled and celebrated together.  Coins that bear the year of their meeting, marriage, and two coins, glued back-to-back, that show their respective years of birth.  The next deposit – a high perch where Mt. Everest dominates the horizon.  There are plaques in Winnie’s name at New York’s Museum of Natural History, Hayden Planetarium and Lefrak Theatre.  Grants to Wild Gift’s leaders.  You may see Joe at different times of the year, including Christmas, decorating the tree Winnie’s fellow teachers helped plant in her memory at Pequannock Township High School in New Jersey. These are tributes that inspire poetry in creative writers at Pequannock High and sing the charm and love of a robust and beautiful woman.