Beloved Cardozo High School Secretary Dies At 75

DOUGLASTON, QUEENS — Anastasia Sund, a longtime fixture of the Benjamin N. Cardozo High School community as a parent-teacher association president and an employee, died Jan. 3 at her home in Douglaston. She was 75.

Sund, who was known to the Cardozo community as Ann, worked as the secretary to the principal's office for nearly three decades and led the school's PTA when her two daughters were among the students.

Even after Sund's daughters graduated from Cardozo in 1997 and 1999, Principal Meagan Colby — the fourth and last principal to work with her — said that Sund, in a sense, still had a child roaming the halls.

"She thought of the school as another one of her kids and she treated it in a very parental way, and we all benefited from that," Colby told Patch.

Beyond her role as the principal's gatekeeper, Sund served as the school's de facto historian. She kept an alumni database of thousands of Cardozo graduates that made her the go-to when groups sought to restart, then re-restart, a Cardozo alumni association.

“We counted on Ann to not only be the wonderful secretary and gatekeeper that she was, but she was also a lot of the times our historian because she had such a legacy with the school," Colby said. "She would be able to fill in the blanks on things that happened prior to many of us getting there.”

Sund was a first-generation American, born and raised in Manhattan as the only child of Greek and German immigrant parents. She relocated to Queens, married (later divorced) and had two children, Stacey and Christine.

As the two girls grew up in Douglaston and attended school in Northeast Queens, their mother, too, spent her days in schoolhouses, first as a supply secretary at Jamaica High School and then as a secretary at Cardozo.

Sund's passion for education likely stemmed from an awareness of the opportunities her family had not had, according to her daughter Stacey. Sund's parents never finished high school, and Sund did not have a college degree.

“Making sure her kids went farther than she did was so important," Stacey told Patch.

Stacey and Christine became the first in their family to graduate from college — Stacey from NYU, where she now teaches dance, and Christine from Boston University, then Fordham University as an MBA student.

As Sund's children went far, she remained living in Douglaston. She worked a second job at the fine jewelry counter of the Macy's department store in Manhasset, where she prized helping lost-looking husbands and fathers pick out gifts for their loved ones, as Stacey recalled.

Her favorite neighborhood spot, the now-shuttered TJK Cafe on the Horace Harding Expressway, became the family's party venue, hosting Christine's first baby shower and a surprise 70th birthday celebration for Sund.

It was in Douglaston where Sund died of natural causes, just a few months after her 75th birthday. She had been eligible to retire from Cardozo, and those around her encouraged to take advantage of it, but Sund resisted.

As Colby, the principal, put it, "She was entirely dedicated to the school and everybody knew it.”

Sund is survived by her two children and four grandchildren.