Adma D'heurle

Died

D'HEURLE--Adma. Psychologist beloved for her inspired teaching, her scholarship, her hospitality, and her tabouleh. Succumbed at her Teatown-area home on October 19. Born Adma Jeha (1924) in Lebanon, where she played among olive and silkworm trees, went to boarding school as a teen, and earned a BA at American U. in Beirut. In the US earned an MA at Smith College (1948) and a PhD (1953) in Chicago, where she met and married Francois d'Heurle, a French metallurgist. With sons, Amal, David, and Alain, they were drawn to Yorktown by the new IBM research lab. In 1961 Adma became one of four original faculty members at Mercy College. Forty years later she was named a Distinguished Professor and honored as an Outstanding Mentor. She wrote articles about children's books, foreign folk tales, Simone de Beauvoir, D.H. Lawrence, Ingmar Bergman, Henrik Ibsen, and Birgitta Trotzig. Fluent in Arabic and French, she learned Swedish to become a Fulbright Scholar at Uppsala University, Sweden (1980-81), and the U. of Turku, in Finland (1987-88). Adma excelled at domestic arts. The door of her century-old house in the woods was always open, and visitors were drawn in by Francois's fiery politics and Adma's distinctive cuisine. Francois died in 2007. Adma's survivors are sons, Amal (Muriel Antoine) of Ormoy-la-Riviere, France; David (Jan) of Atlanta, GA; Alain (Jenny) of Colfax, CA; grandchildren, Albert, Phoebe (Hadi Fallapisheh), Leila, Cleo, Gavin Darrow, and Patrick Kavanaugh; and longtime devoted caregiver, Sarah Young and steadfast aides, Cecelia Matailo and Suzanne Edwin. A memorial gathering is planned.

Source: The New York Times

Published on: 03-11-2019