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96 P E R S P E C T I V E | J U LY / AU G U S T 2 0 1 7 milestones DOREEN AUSTRIA 1957 – 2017 by her former husband, Eric Rosenberg I knew Doreen for thirty years. In that time, she was many things to me —a colleague, a friend, a lover, my wife, my ex—but most important of all, Doreen was a loving mother to our daughter Hallie. Doreen was a very smart, strong-willed person, fiercely loyal to those close to her. She was full of energy and good humor, the woman loved to laugh. She had an acute sense of right and wrong, of fairness and playing by the rules. Those qualities served her well as a mother, and later in the final chapter of her career, as the Field Representative for the Art Directors Guild. Doreen was a Jersey girl, an Italian-American raised in the towns of Clifton and Garfield in the northern part of the state near New York City. Doreen explored various avenues in her early and mid-20s, holding a variety of jobs, including work in animation and copy editing. But she also continued her education. She spoke often about a summer journalism course at Northwestern University, a field she seriously considered as a career. She went on to study at The New School, and eventually, Parsons School of Design where she trained to be a Graphic Designer and received her degree. Most interesting of all, and likely unknown to most of you, was that Doreen was an entertainer during this period in her life, a singer in a band or two and a member of the cast of The Uncle Floyd Show in the early 1980s, a zany, oddball, and groundbreaking UHF talk and variety show broadcast from New Jersey, hosted by Floyd Vivino, with musical direction by his brothers Jimmy and Jerry, now of The Conan O'Brian Show. Doreen was one of the show's regular players, performing in a range of wacky skits where she showed off her vocal prowess. In her late 20s, Doreen went into magazine art direction, landing a job at Whittle Publications' Moviegoer, a complimentary magazine theaters provided to patrons nationwide. She worked at an early computing magazine called Datamation, and then eventually at Business Week in 1987 where we were hired simultaneously. Distant colleagues for quite some time, we eventually became great friends, and nearly three years into our jobs at the magazine, became romantically involved. Before we knew it Doreen had moved in with me in Brooklyn, and so began our time together. After she left Business Week in 1990, Doreen went on to other New York publications, first at a terrific start-up, 7 Days in Greenwich Village, then The Wall Street Journal. Shortly before we moved to California, she began freelancing for The New York Times. As someone who had the highest regard for fine journalism, she was thrilled to be working at such esteemed publications. In the summer of 1993, we were on location in South Carolina, where I was the Graphic Designer for Forrest Gump. It was there that Doreen began a lengthy career designing graphics for film and television. Upon returning to Los Angeles, Doreen and I got married. She joined the Scenic, Title and Graphic Artists and we worked together again on Jerry Maguire and then Titanic. She worked on Contact throughout her pregnancy with Hallie. In May 2012, Doreen transitioned from graphics into working for the Art Directors Guild as their Field Representative, but illness too quickly forced her to take leave of that job and to begin an early retirement. The last few years had been very hard for her, when the cancer returned last June, she waged her last long battle, stubbornly outlasting the initial prognosis, fighting so hard to be here for Hallie's twentieth birthday last month, which meant so much to us all. Doreen is survived by her parents John and Martha Austria, her younger sister Bridget, and her daughter Hallie. Goodbye Doreen, you will be missed.