Mildred Virginia Nuechterlein

Mildred Virginia Nuechterlein, 94, died peacefully at Westminster-Canterbury of the Blue Ridge on April 9, 2019. She is survived by her husband, Donald Nuechterlein of Charlottesville; children Jan Steiert of Denver, Colorado; Jill Vosburg of Fort Collins, Colorado; Jeffrey Nuechterlein of Alexandria, Virginia; Jonathan Nuechterlein of Chevy Chase, Maryland; three granddaughters, three grandsons, and one great-grandson. Mildred (Mil) was born November 11, 1924, in Havre de Grace, Maryland, and grew up in Martinsburg, West Virginia. She moved to Washington, D.C. in 1941 and was employed by the War Department during World War II. In 1946, she was recruited by the US Army to work in Berlin, Germany, where she joined her sister on the staff of the U.S. Office of Military Government (OMGUS). There she met her future husband, Ensign Donald Nuechterlein, USN, who was released by the Navy in Bremerhaven to accept a job in Berlin on the OMGUS staff. Mil returned to Washington in 1947, worked for a year at the War Department in the Pentagon, and then moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she and Don were married in 1948. Mil and Don lived in many interesting places over the next twenty years, including Copenhagen, Denmark; Reykjavik, Iceland; Bangkok, Thailand; Berkeley, California; and Washington, D.C. during the Vietnam War. While in Copenhagen, Mil developed a life-long interest in the history of art after visits to the National Gallery of Denmark. In Bangkok, she was invited to be the English teacher for Thai classical dancers at the Academy of Classical Dance. In Berkeley and in Washington, Mil continued her studies and received her BA in art history from The American University in Washington, D.C. In addition to nurturing her four talented children, Mil was the typist and copy editor of Don’s books during their more than seventy years together, including the first one, which compared student life in Denmark and America. She helped in the publishing of other books on Iceland, Thailand, and America during the Vietnam War. Mil was grateful, she said, for the introduction of the computer in the 1980s. Mil and Don’s lives changed when they moved to Charlottesville in the early 1970s and built their home in the Colthurst Farm subdivision, where they resided for forty years. In 1975, they moved abroad with their young son, Jonathan, to Aberystwyth, Wales, in Great Britain, where Don did research. They traveled extensively in Britain and Scotland before returning to Charlottesville in July 1976, in time for the Bicentennial of American independence. Mil made many friends in the Charlottesville community and was a member of the Fortnightly Book Club, the oldest book club in the region. She loved to travel and live in foreign countries, and that continued following Don’s retirement when he received invitations to teach in Canada, Australia, and Germany during the 1990s. In each country, she made good friends and then corresponded with them for years afterward. She also edited the columns that Don wrote for Virginia newspapers, and “she was a tough editor,” he commented. A funeral service will be held at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Ivy on Saturday, April 13, 2019, at 2 pm. A remembrance gathering to celebrate Mil’s life will be held at Westminster-Canterbury following the service.