Beloved parents of seven children killed in the Surfside condo collapse
In April 2020, Chana Wasserman penned a blog post about her mom, Ingrid “Itty” Ainsworth.
Titled “A Mother Like No Other,” Wasserman described Ainsworth as someone who was not only extremely neat and passionate about life but also filled with a love of people.
“Every person she encountered, ever in her life, became her friend,” Wasserman wrote. “Everyone was treated as equals. The guy at the laundromat, the guy working at the fruit market, the receptionist at the doctors office, the high school kid working at blockbuster, the seamstress, the lady doing her nails, a pigeon, the stewardess, the lady cleaning the house, the outcast, the misunderstood, the popular, the unpopular.”
The bodies of Ainsworth, 66, and her husband, Tzvi, 68, were found Monday among the wreckage where Champlain Towers South once stood, according to Miami-Dade police. As of Monday evening, the death toll from the condo collapse stood at 28 with 117 still missing.
In the days leading up to the recovery of the Ainsworths’ bodies, Devorah Leah Phillips, the Ainsworths’ niece, remembered her aunt as a “bucket filler” on Instagram.
“She fills up everyone’s bucket with an abundance of love and compliments,” Phillips wrote. “... You feel safe with her because you know she’ll only say kind words when you leave the room and be your secret keeper for life.”
Phillips is the daughter of Rabbi Raphael Tennenhaus, the rabbi of the Chabad of South Broward in Hallandale Beach, which counted 34 members among the missing in the condo collapse. Last week, Tennenhaus wrote to his congregants, asking them to “Please say Tehillim [psalm readings] for my brother in law and sister in law, Tzvi Daniel ben Yehudis and Itta bas Miriam,” using the couple’s Hebrew names.
Phillips also penned a tribute to her aunt that her father shared last week, when she was still missing, noting how she personifies the word love.
“Love so strong the thought of speaking badly about someone hurts. Physically. And that is my aunt. She doesn’t preach this truth. She lives it.”
The couple had seven children and moved to South Florida four years ago from Australia. Many of the seven live in Florida, including a son who had a baby in recent days, according to The Associated Press. Another son in South Africa also just had a baby.
Chabad.org described the Ainsworths as doting grandparents who were also known for their hospitality and love for helping others.
In Wasserman’s blog post, she recalled her mother’s battle with a chronic muscular disorder, which left her at times bedridden due to the immense pain. The disease could’ve extinguished Ingrid’s fiery desire for life. Though there were days that the matriarch didn’t feel like her normal self, she remained a constant presence in her children’s life — even if it wasn’t always in person.
“It did take away from her physically being there,” Wasserman recalled, “but it didn’t take away from her being there for us in every other way, at any moment of any day and for that I am grateful.”
The funeral of the Ainsworths will be held Tuesday, July 6. It is expected to pass the Lubavitch World Headquarters, 770 Eastern Parkway, in Brooklyn, N.Y., at 2:30 p.m. The couple will be interred at 3:30 p.m. at the Old Montfiore Cemetery in Queens, New York, near the resting place of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and near the burial place of Itty’s father, Reb Yosef Mordechai Fellig, according to the Chabad of South Broward.
