Mary Frances (Raphael) Dunham

1932 - 2021
Mary Frances Dunham of New York City, NY died on Monday (October 11, 2021) at home where she lived with her daughter's family. She was 89 and had lived with Parkinson's disease since 2006.



She was born March 26, 1932 in Summit, NJ. She graduated from the Brearley school in 1950 and from Radcliffe College in 1954. Her first job was teaching ancient Greek and Latin at Brearley. In 1958 she obtained a master's degree in education from Harvard. That same year she married architect, Daniel C. Dunham whom she met in 1951 at the summer Fontainebleau program where she studied composition with Nadia Boulanger. She and her husband spent their first year together in London before moving to East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in 1960 where they lived for nearly a decade. She learned Bengali, wrote the first guidebook for foreigners in Dhaka, and began her studies of Jarigan folk music with the poet Jasimuddin. In 1972 she completed an M.A. in Indic Studies from Columbia University. In 1979 she was an editor on Ravi Shankar's Learning Indian Music textbook. In 1997 she published Jarigan: Muslim Epic Songs of Bangladesh. In 1999 she worked with renowned poet Ahmed Sofa to translate Tales of Flowers, Trees and Birds. In 2013 she was honored by the president of Bangladesh in recognition of her contribution to the 1971 war of liberation by raising awareness in the U.S. Congress.



As a pioneering bike advocate, Mary Frances was one of the first members of Transportation Alternatives when they were founded in New York in the 1970s. She led their bike education program, worked on The Bicycle Blueprint and published more than 100 interviews, articles and letters to the editor in newspapers around the world in support of biking. She always traveled with her fold-up bike whether living in big cities like Shanghai and Barcelona or traveling to small villages such as Tikal or Lijiang. In 2006 she moved to Shanghai with her daughter, Katherine's family and lived there until 2013. Since moving back to New York City in 2013, she was an active member of the LiLY Morningside Village French Circle.



Her early childhood was spent in France where she became fluent in French. Her love of languages continued throughout her life. In addition to Bengali and French she studied ancient Greek, Latin, Sanskrit and Arabic. In Bangladesh she taught the doctors from the Cholera Lab the Bengali they would need for their surveys in the villages. She also helped establish the first Alliance Française in Dhaka during the 1960s.



She is survived by her daughter, Katherine Dunham, her son-in-law Steve Sweeting, her two grandsons Nicholas and Xano and her brother Christopher Raphael. To honor her memory, contributions can be made in her name to these bike organizations:

TRANSPORTATION ALTERNATIVES: 111 John Street, Suite 260, New York, NY 10038, phone: (212) 629-8080, email: info@transalt.org">info@transalt.org">info@transalt.org">info@transalt.org

BIKE NEW YORK: 140 E. 45th Street, Suite 2002 New York, NY 10017, phone: (212) 682-2340, email