Muriel Silberman Brahinsky, 1924–2013


Muriel Kay Silberman Brahinsky, M.D., a retired physician and health-science educator, passed away in San Antonio on November 1, 2013.  She was 88.

Muriel was born in Fort Worth, Texas, on November 16, 1924, to Russian immigrants Max and Fanye (Antweil) Silberman, and grew up in Dallas.  Following her graduation as salutatorian from Forest Avenue High School, she attended Southern Methodist University. At SMU she earned membership in the Alpha Lambda Delta and Mortar Board honor societies and graduated with a B.A. in Pre-Medicine.  Muriel continued her studies at Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, becoming an M.D. in 1946, at age 21.

Muriel served an internship in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and medical residencies in Tulsa and in Wilmington, North Carolina, following which she returned to Dallas and established a successful private practice in obstetrics and pediatrics. In 1950 she met and married Henry Brahinsky, a concert violinist and music teacher, and soon afterward gave up her medical practice to raise their three sons. From 1964 to 1974, Muriel taught developmentally disabled children. Subsequently she was employed in the Dallas public schools, where for sixteen years she taught and wrote curriculum for courses in anatomy and physiology, pathology, and Latin in the Health Careers Cluster at Skyline Career Development Center and the DISD High School for the Health Professions. She retired from DISD in 1990 but continued teaching courses in medical terminology as a part-time instructor at Eastfield College in Mesquite, Texas, until 2005.

In their retirement years, Muriel and Henry traveled the world, then settled into a Dallas retirement home, where Muriel led sessions in trivia, wordplay and word origins, and reminiscences. Henry died in 2001. In 2007 Muriel left Dallas, her home for more than eighty years, to live with her son and daughter-in-law in San Antonio, a city she came to love in the last six years of her life.

Muriel loved writing poetry for every occasion, reading, and anything with chocolate.

Muriel was preceded in death by her parents, her husband, a sister, Sylvia, a brother, Joseph, her oldest son, Martin, and his wife, Heidi. She is survived by two sons, Gerald Brahinsky and wife Phyllis of Irving, Texas, and Eric Brahinsky and wife April of San Antonio, and by two granddaughters, Simone Brahinsky of New York City, and Rachel Brahinsky Evans and husband Jadon of Scarborough, Ontario, Canada.