Marion Ament

MARION LOUISE NEUSTADT AMENT April 12, 1923-July 21, 2017 Born in Fresno, CA, and raised in San Francisco, Marion Ament was a proud alumna of that city’s renowned Lowell High School. In 1944, she graduated from Bryn Mawr College with a degree in Philosophy and Political Sciences and was immediately recruited by the US Department of State. As a young staffer she worked on the French Desk and in the team that put together the European Recovery Program, where she saw the Marshall Plan’s progress from its birth as a concept to its actual launching in France, beginning in 1948. Around that time, she met the love of her life, William Sterling (Red) Ament, mathematician at the Naval Research Laboratory and they married in 1950. She earned an MA in Spanish at the Johns Hopkins University in 1975 and taught Spanish language and literature at the University of Maryland in the sixties and seventies and at George Washington University from the mid-eighties to the late nineties. She had a true gift for languages. She mastered the rhythms of thought, sounds, and diction of Castilian Spanish to such perfection that she could not be distinguished from a native speaker. Marion followed her political interests, not just academically but in her everyday life. She was active in the League of Women Voters and Neighbors, Inc. Among many causes, she supported the civil rights movement and schools for Native Americans. After retirement she was involved with the governance of her Condominium Association at Parkside Plaza well into her eighties. She was always a champion of literature, classical music, art and theater. Her studies and her work brought her in touch with a great many foreigners, from European and Latin American students and refugees to distinguished visiting writers and scholars. For decades, she opened her house to these foreigners and immigrants and, in her unassuming ways, helped them find their way in a new, unfamiliar world. Marion Ament knew better than most that words matter, that what we say and how we say it have consequences, and that the ways in which we talk to each other are a measure of who we are. This is how family and friends, all those who loved her, want her to be remembered. Marion Ament was preceded in death by her husband of 30 years in 1980, and by their son, George in 2006. Survivors include two daughters, Helen and Annie, a son, Billy, and daughter-in-law, Anne Rouse, three granddaughters, Renata Ament, Eleanor Sciannella and Elizabeth Sciannella, two grandsons, Nathaniel Ament and Patrick Hill (Emma Pfefferkorn) and two great grand-children, Desmond and Lillian. The family cannot express enough gratitude to Marion’s caregivers during her hard fought battle with dementia and to all caregivers for their value and service to all families and communities. A Memorial Service will be held on Saturday, September 16 at 5pm, at Paint Branch Unitarian Universalist Church, 3215 Powder Mill Rd. Adelphi, MD 20783.