Lebanon, N.H. —
Born in Berlin in 1923, she fled Nazi Germany with her parents and brother Joseph at age 14. The family found refuge in Turkey with the help of her maternal uncle, a long-time resident of that country. There, she attended the American Girls’ School and Robert College, receiving her bachelor’s degree in 1944. Her yearbook confirmed that “the button or fastener that stays fastened on Fiff [as family and friends called her], or the shirttail that stays tucked in, has yet to be invented.”
She also met her future husband in Istanbul; thus the daughter of German Jewish merchant family married the son of a German Lutheran academic family—despite strong initial objections from both—in January 1945. Their first son, Robert, was born that year, and their second, David, in 1948.
Unwilling to contemplate either a return to post-war Germany or a life in Turkey, Walter and Miriam decided to emigrate to the United States. In 1949, with the help of the International Rescue Committee (for which Walter had worked during the war), he found a teaching job at a Quaker academy in a very small town in Tennessee, where they were welcomed as the first foreigners ever to set foot there. Daughters Prudence and Corinne were born in North Carolina where her husband taught at Guilford College in Greensboro, and UNC-Chapel Hill.
Over the next six decades, she helped raise their four children, making sure they all spoke German, and followed her husband’s academic and vacation peregrinations to Massachusetts, Germany, South Carolina, Colorado, Mexico, Greece, New Hampshire, Turkey, Cyprus, Grenada, and Italy—and made her own way to France, Spain, and Russia. Besides Walter, there were only a few constants in Miriam’s life: She was always both teaching and learning—usually languages, she was always engaged in athletics, and she was always riding a motorcycle.
Upon the family’s arrival in Hanover in 1966, Miriam set about putting down roots in New Hampshire, relearning to ski and teaching and tutoring French and German in local schools with her unique blend of affection and Darwinian rigor. She rode to her early-morning tennis matches with Walter and other partners on a blue moped, later upgrading to a Suzuki 250 scooter. She also learned to ice skate, swam, rowed, water-skied, wind-surfed and, especially, played pick-up soccer with the same women’s group as her daughters and her granddaughter Jessica.
Interspersed with these activities, she earned an MEd from Notre Dame College in Manchester, N.H. in 1980, and subsequently taught at Hanover HS, Kimball Union Academy, Crossroads Academy, and the Runnemede School. While at Hanover High, she took up wood-working, and despite her legendary impatience and disdain for measuring or finish work, made an impressive number of nice pieces, from cutting boards to furniture.
Never retiring in any sense, Miriam continued teaching and tutoring well into her late 80’s, a familiar figure on either four wheels or two, riding her motor scooter in sneakers and helmet, and vigorously resistant to any suggestion that she slow down to speeds at least commensurate with, if not actually below, her numerical age. The Lebanon and Hanover police departments would have appreciated the reduction in their work load.
In 2009, she and Walter moved to Harvest Hill in Lebanon, where her active physical and intellectual life continued: reading, occasionally visiting grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and taking miles-long morning walks with friends, especially Jane Bedford, her most constant and generous friend. She enjoyed concerts, theater, dining out, traveling to N.H. beaches, tutoring, bridge, and a current-affairs discussion group.
Walter’s death in 2011, however, left her without the love of her life and diminished her zest for living. Although she traveled back to Berlin twice (once with each daughter), as a guest of the Jewish Museum Berlin, to speak to German high-school students about her experiences in Nazi Berlin and subsequently wrote an article for the local newspaper about the trip, she was more focused on finishing a memoir and getting her affairs in order before ending her life. Her memoir is currently being edited for future publication.
On March 23, she implemented her long-considered plan and, with characteristic determination, stopped eating and drinking until her death.
Her children would like to thank the many friends and family who visited and wrote; Dr. Pat Glowa, her doctor and friend; the kind nurses and aides of Harvest Hill; Cynthia Stadler and the Bayada Hospice nurses and doctor; and the Armistead caregivers for their dedication.
Miriam is survived by her four children; eight grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren. A memorial service will be held this summer in New Hampshire.