Mina Malaguti Hirten

Mina Malaguti Hirten passed away peacefully at age 97 on December 14, 2020. Born in Bologna, Italy, on March 30 1923 to Clodoveo Malaguti ad Margherita Mattioli, she grew up there. As a teenager, she studied to be an opera singer and was known for having a powerful voice, despite her diminutive size. According to her late brother, Alceo Malaguti, when she sang, she “shook the glass in the chandelier.”

When she was 16 years old, she won a singing contest and toured Italy with 12 other singers. Her career stalled during the war, when she took refuge at a farm in the mountains near Verona. She would later find work singing for American soldiers during the occupation.

In the early 1950s, she formed a band with a group from Genoa, and they toured the Middle East, spending time in Ankara and then Tehran.

While in Tehran, she sang with her band at the Palace Hotel there. It was during this time that she met her future husband, John Edward Hirten, who was working for the State Department.

Despite not understanding a word of each other’s languages, they struck up a relationship, which led to marriage in 1954. She would come back with John to settle in the U.S., first in New York, then Little Rock, Arkansas, then to California (Stockton, San Francisco, San Diego). For a time, they also lived in Washington, DC, and in Honolulu, Hawaii. The marriage lasted 62 years until John’s death in 2016.

Mina’s family will miss her warm smile, her laughter, her fabulous cooking, and her loving support. She is survived by her daughter, Giovanna Scruby, and her sons John Karl Hirten and Marc James Hirten. Another daughter, Elizabeth Smolen, passed away in 2008. There are also eleven surviving grandchildren and 9 great grandchildren.