Brenda Levenson

Brenda was born and raised in Paris and though she spent more of her life in the US than in France, she was French through and through. She was mortified a few years ago during a trip to Paris when a waiter told her she spoke French very well . . . for an American.

Brenda was born in 1933 and had a normal childhood until the Nazi invasion when she was 6 years old. The war years were like what you have read about, her education interrupted, never enough food, hiding with neighbors for a few weeks at a time, as one family got too scared and then she and her mother were sent to another house, always afraid the soldiers would come banging on the door, and many months spent not knowing if her father would return after his arrest. He did return, though he was no longer the happy and loving father my mother had known as a young child. He had what we now call PTSD after surviving several concentration camps, including Auschwitz. Her mother’s strength and wisdom helped the family survive the war. The war experience left its mark on Brenda throughout her life, as it did on all Holocaust survivors.

Brenda was 12 and 14 years older than her 2 sisters, both of whom were born after the war. Because their parents worked, she was like a second mother to her sisters, whom she adored, and she had fond memories of taking them on outings when they were young children.

Brenda loved learning. She always wanted to go to university, but when she was finishing high school her parents told her she could only do so if she agreed to become a nurse or a teacher, but she had no interest in those professions. After high school she found a job in Paris as a bilingual secretary with an international shipping company. Though she never had a college education, something she always regretted, she was extremely well-educated.

In the mid 1950’s, Brenda’s parents met an American couple while traveling, and eventually Brenda was corresponding regularly with their son Richard. At about the time her parents moved the family from Paris to London, Richard came to Europe, met Brenda and proposed. After their wedding she moved from Paris, a major European city with lots of culture and life, to Framingham, Massachusetts, which in 1957 was a very small suburb in the middle of nowhere. The years spent in Massachusetts were challenging in many ways, but the births of her 3 children brought her great joy, as she loved motherhood.

About 6 years after their marriage, the family relocated to Detroit for Richard’s job, and then to Northern Virginia, where Brenda lived for almost 60 years. She was a stay at home mom for many years, going back to work when her 2 older children were in college. She worked first as a legislative aide for Senator Bob Dole, then as the Public Affairs Director for B’nai B’rith Women, and then for the State Department as a translator, accompanying French speaking visiting dignitaries from other countries in their travels around the U.S. Eventually she found her favorite job, doing freelance translations of documents for NGO’s involved in the healthcare field in Africa.

Brenda’s love of learning continued throughout her life. She took classes at synagogues, museums & local universities and was a voracious reader – almost all non-fiction. She religiously read the Washington Post and watched PBS news every day. Her strong belief in education also expressed itself through teaching. She taught Sunday school for several years, and long after her own children were grown, volunteered in the neighborhood school after it became a magnet school with many underprivileged children.

Brenda was married for 53 years prior to Richard’s death from Parkinson’s Disease. She was also preceded in death by her youngest daughter Pearl Simmons (husband Reid) and her sister Annie Lass. She is survived by her daughter Naomi Schaffer (partner Roger), son Daniel Levenson (wife Janice), 7 grandchildren and their spouses, 5 great-grandchildren, and her sister Myriam Barnett (husband Chris).

The staff at Vienna Manor, where Brenda lived for the last year and a half, truly loved mom and cared for her so wonderfully in her final days. Brenda was loved by many family members and friends, and she will be missed terribly. Given the quality of her life in the recent past, her death is a blessing, but the loss is still great.