Priscilla Heim, a central figure in Los Angeles education, died Sunday Dec 7th in Aliso Viejo, CA at age 93.
Originally from Boston, she graduated Radcliffe college in 1952 where she met Harvard student and aspiring actor John Kerr. She worked as an editor in Washington DC for several months after graduation. They married and she moved to New York City where Kerr won a Tony award. They moved to Los Angeles in 1956. John Kerr starred in many movies and TV shows. They raised three children and she worked as an editor at Planning Research Corporation and the Journal of Symbolic Logic. They divorced in 1972.
As a forty-one year old single mother, Heim attended UCLA and earned a Masters in Fine Arts in comparative literature, planning on a teaching job. She married her professor Michael Henry Heim, and began a life in literature at the highest level, and in education.
While teaching at Crossroads School she created "Adopt a School", a joint tutoring program at the 32nd Street Elementary School that continues to this day.
Filmmaker Matt Tyrnauer, a former Crossroads student, fondly recalled, "Priscilla taught me Latin in high school. With her erudition and mid-Atlantic accent she was a beguiling presence and impactful teacher who put up with our incompetence, patiently teaching Caesar and Cattulus, and polishing off our rough SoCal edges."
During the Cold War, Michael and Priscilla, as an indefatigable husband and wife team, and active members of Amnesty International, they helped writers and scholars immigrate from Soviet occupied countries into university positions in the U.S. One young family included the then nine year old Max Boot, now a best-selling author, senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a weekly columnist for The Washington Post.
"She was such a kind and lovely person. I feel like I've known her my whole life and I'm the better for it." Boot recalls. "She really embodied all that is good about America."
For years their Westwood home was a literary salon for East European writers including Milan Kundera whose book "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" translated by her husband, was a best-seller adapted into a movie. Another of Michael's translations, the Gunther Grass novel "My Century" won the 2000 Nobel Prize.
Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Jack Miles said, "I will miss Priscilla! No one knew better than she how to be light-hearted and serious at once -- hosting heady discussions with Michael at their Westwood salon but also singing madrigals and sharing laughs along with vegetables from her bounteous garden."
In 2003 They established the PEN/Heim Translation Grants at PEN America, which annually awards prizes and grants to five translators.
"We are deeply saddened by the loss of Priscilla Heim whose dedication with her late husband Michael Henry Heim to the work of translators has greatly advanced progress in bringing literary works from across the world into English translation," said Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, interim co-CEO and chief of Literary Programming at PEN America.
268 translators have to date received Pen Heim Grants to help bring literary works in dozens of languages to readers in the United States and the rest of the English-speaking world.
In 2008 Heim began chairing quarterly roundtable discussions on "Issues in Education" a forum for educators sponsored by The Harvard Club of Southern California. In 2017 she was honored with the Harvard Club Award for Outstanding Service.
Michael died in 2012, but Priscilla pressed on with his work, including their plan to create a chair in Central and East European Letters at Indiana University, where Michael had been an adjunct colleague. Its intent was to further the work he was doing, including research and scholarship in addition to translation. In 2016 she negotiated an Endowed Gift Agreement with Indiana University for the Michael Henry Heim Chair in Central and East European Literature and Letters. In 2023 the chair was formally endowed. "It is our great honor to announce this position newly endowed by Priscilla Heim in honor of her late husband the eminent literary scholar and translator Michael Henry Heim," the University announced, "The Heim bequest will also make possible a one-semester visiting professor each year and two graduate recruitment fellowships, each of which will bear the Heim name and highlight our continued commitment to Michael Heim's lifelong work."
Her son Michael said: "she was a hero, also as a mother. She lived an amazing, important, long life."
She is survived by her children Jocelyn, Rebecca and Michael, five grandchildren, two step-grandchildren, two nephews, grand-niece, grand-nephew, their children and extended family.
Originally from Boston, she graduated Radcliffe college in 1952 where she met Harvard student and aspiring actor John Kerr. She worked as an editor in Washington DC for several months after graduation. They married and she moved to New York City where Kerr won a Tony award. They moved to Los Angeles in 1956. John Kerr starred in many movies and TV shows. They raised three children and she worked as an editor at Planning Research Corporation and the Journal of Symbolic Logic. They divorced in 1972.
As a forty-one year old single mother, Heim attended UCLA and earned a Masters in Fine Arts in comparative literature, planning on a teaching job. She married her professor Michael Henry Heim, and began a life in literature at the highest level, and in education.
While teaching at Crossroads School she created "Adopt a School", a joint tutoring program at the 32nd Street Elementary School that continues to this day.
Filmmaker Matt Tyrnauer, a former Crossroads student, fondly recalled, "Priscilla taught me Latin in high school. With her erudition and mid-Atlantic accent she was a beguiling presence and impactful teacher who put up with our incompetence, patiently teaching Caesar and Cattulus, and polishing off our rough SoCal edges."
During the Cold War, Michael and Priscilla, as an indefatigable husband and wife team, and active members of Amnesty International, they helped writers and scholars immigrate from Soviet occupied countries into university positions in the U.S. One young family included the then nine year old Max Boot, now a best-selling author, senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a weekly columnist for The Washington Post.
"She was such a kind and lovely person. I feel like I've known her my whole life and I'm the better for it." Boot recalls. "She really embodied all that is good about America."
For years their Westwood home was a literary salon for East European writers including Milan Kundera whose book "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" translated by her husband, was a best-seller adapted into a movie. Another of Michael's translations, the Gunther Grass novel "My Century" won the 2000 Nobel Prize.
Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Jack Miles said, "I will miss Priscilla! No one knew better than she how to be light-hearted and serious at once -- hosting heady discussions with Michael at their Westwood salon but also singing madrigals and sharing laughs along with vegetables from her bounteous garden."
In 2003 They established the PEN/Heim Translation Grants at PEN America, which annually awards prizes and grants to five translators.
"We are deeply saddened by the loss of Priscilla Heim whose dedication with her late husband Michael Henry Heim to the work of translators has greatly advanced progress in bringing literary works from across the world into English translation," said Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, interim co-CEO and chief of Literary Programming at PEN America.
268 translators have to date received Pen Heim Grants to help bring literary works in dozens of languages to readers in the United States and the rest of the English-speaking world.
In 2008 Heim began chairing quarterly roundtable discussions on "Issues in Education" a forum for educators sponsored by The Harvard Club of Southern California. In 2017 she was honored with the Harvard Club Award for Outstanding Service.
Michael died in 2012, but Priscilla pressed on with his work, including their plan to create a chair in Central and East European Letters at Indiana University, where Michael had been an adjunct colleague. Its intent was to further the work he was doing, including research and scholarship in addition to translation. In 2016 she negotiated an Endowed Gift Agreement with Indiana University for the Michael Henry Heim Chair in Central and East European Literature and Letters. In 2023 the chair was formally endowed. "It is our great honor to announce this position newly endowed by Priscilla Heim in honor of her late husband the eminent literary scholar and translator Michael Henry Heim," the University announced, "The Heim bequest will also make possible a one-semester visiting professor each year and two graduate recruitment fellowships, each of which will bear the Heim name and highlight our continued commitment to Michael Heim's lifelong work."
Her son Michael said: "she was a hero, also as a mother. She lived an amazing, important, long life."
She is survived by her children Jocelyn, Rebecca and Michael, five grandchildren, two step-grandchildren, two nephews, grand-niece, grand-nephew, their children and extended family.
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