Sat, 22 Aug 2009
From: Ana Mae Barbosa
I am blocked to write about Maryl. I loved her too much. Hopefully I had oportunity to demonstrate, dedicating one of my books to her. The last two months I had been sick. I had pneumonia that put me in the hospital for one month. I avoided to call her because I was so down!! Maryl’s last months were a lesson of love. She had time to say beautiful words to each one of us who love her and to plan the depart with the dignity that characterized her whole life. For me the NAEA conferences never will be the same without her. I didn’t go to NAEA the last two year afraid to miss her too much. Maryl was very important to the Art Education in Latin America. During the time of hard dictatorships in this part of the world we could travel outside the country with very little money. Money was controlled by the government. Several times Maryl paid by herself the fees of INSEA Congresses for art educators from South America. Maryl’s dedication to INSEA advertizing and stimulating membership and participation by all means will be remembered with gratitude. Our dinners after Congresses always with Larry Kantner and sometimes with other friends, trying the best restaurants of the world, put in practice our taste for diversity. Losing Maryl made me feel to desire to be closer to the very good friends no matter the geographic distance.
Photo left to right: Graeme Sullivan, Maryl Fletcher de Jong, Marjorie Cohee Manifold, Enid Zimmerman, Teri Marche, and Mary Stokrocki at Enid's 2006 retirement party in Chicago organized by Deborah Smith-Shank.
Last year I had the pleasure of meeting Ana Mae at the InSEA congress in Osaka and traveled with her and Ann Kuo to Nara for the day. Ana Mae is a very kind and gracious woman who has done so much to promote art education and the indigenous cultures of South America. It is wonderful to know how far Maryl’s influence reached and to read about her efforts in uniting art educators globally
Amelia Earhart wrote: “Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.” I can think of no one who was more courageous than Maryl throughout her entire life to the very end. She was dedicated to helping other art educators around the world and to championing equity for women. Although not everybody appreciated the lengths she would go to promote her many causes, she courageously did what she felt she had to do and in the end her generosity now is manifest in all the lives she influenced and all the care she took with each individual blessed to be counted as her friend. I was privileged to see her a few months before she was too early taken from us. Thinking I would be the one to comfort, I was comforted by her courage, her zest for life, her dedication to her beloved husband and her family cats’ future lives, and the distribution of her extensive library to the field of art education. She will be missed, but her legacy will be with us for generations to come. Maryl is at peace now.