Hilda Beer Grauman

Grauman—Hilda Beer Grauman, 94, on June 20, 2019, peacefully, at home in Kendal at Longwood, Kennett Square, Pa. Hilda was born on June 14, 1925, in Saarbrucken, Germany, to Lucy and Otto Beer. Her Jewish family emigrated to Paris in 1935 and two years later to the United States. Her parents found Quakers in Woodstown, N.J., where Hilda married John Grauman in 1949. Along the way her adopted French identity became an important part of her life, as she completed high school at New York’s Lycée Français and later became a language teacher. Graduating from Western College for Women and earning a master’s from Syracuse University, she worked as a personnel officer in the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, where John worked as a demographer. While living in New York, she taught in New Rochelle at the Ursuline School. John’s career took the family to Paris in 1956 and to Santiago de Chile in 1959–1962, where Hilda founded a correspondence-based high school for American teenagers living there. After John’s early death in 1976, she moved to Philadelphia, Pa., continuing her teaching career at Abington Friends School until her retirement in 1995 to Kendal, where her three siblings joined her.

She was an active and faithful member of Scarsdale (N.Y.), Abington (Pa.), and Kendal Meetings. Family and friends will remember her for her passion for peace and cultural understanding as manifested in her devotion to friends and widespread family; bicycling trips through Europe with her brother Martin and his wife, Winnie; dedication as a medical interpreter for Spanish-speaking patients; recruiting of youth volunteers for AFSC workcamps in Mexico; teaching of foreign languages; and tutoring immigrants in English as a second language in her final years.

Hilda was predeceased by her husband, John Grauman; her sister, Lise Stein, and a brother, Martin Beer. She is survived by her children, Frank Grauman (Louise), Tom Grauman (Wendy), and Lisa Adler (Stephen); one brother, John Beer; seven grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.

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