- Date Of Birth: July 12, 1926
- Date Of Death: July 28, 2019
- State: Michigan
NAHM, MONICA EUGENIA Monica Eugenia Nahm died on Sunday, July 28th, surrounded by her adoring family. She was a longtime resident of Kalamazoo, but was with her family in Greenwich CT for the past few years. Monica Nahm was born Moni- ca Eugenia Diment, on a dairy farm in Somerset, England. She had three sisters Pearl, Agatha, and Vanessa. Her family took in children who had left London during the air raids of London, and perhaps it is then that she developed her grace and love of helping others.
After spending her early years in England, she traveled to Milan, Italy, and Paris, France, to pursue her linguistic studies. In Italy, she worked with movie studios, and then with Pirelli. She emigrated to Manhattan, New York to work for Pirelli, and lived there for a year before being recruited to be a translator for the Italian Ski Team at the 1960 Squaw Valley Winter Olympics. It was there, at an international student party, that she met her future husband Andrew. Monica and Andrew eventually came to Kalamazoo, where they made a home and raised their two children Elizabeth and Frederick. Monica was the French teacher at Loy Norrix High School for many years, introducing countless young adults to the French language and culture.
As part of her lifelong love of the Italian language, she held private courses for people in her home, and started many adults on their path of learning. She translated in her early career for Upjohn, and continued to work in translation while also maintaining her full time teaching duties. Her book “Saga of the Italian Pennisula” was published and was a historical review of ethnographic changes that shaped Italy.
Monica was a huge fan of the Kalamazoo music society, attending concerts and hosting students at her home along with all the other exchange students that were common at the Nahm house. Monica and her husband Andrew were famous for their crowded, and often raucous New Year’s Eve dance parties, and the Nahm house was unofficially known as a party house, before that term became popular. Monica loved to host dinner parties for friends, visiting dignitaries, and family; both hers and those of her husband. She was a teacher, a world traveler, a wonderful wife, and a giving and loving mother who touched so many lives throughout her long and spectacularly splendid life. She loved a good meal, a healthy laugh, and was always smiling even throughout the worst of times such as the precocious death of her dear daughter Elizabeth and husband An- drew. Monica Nahm is survived by her son Frederick, step-children Ki-Huang and Sook, and her grandchildren Anne Marie, Andrew, Jackson and George Nahm.
