‘WHATS UP’ SONOMA COUNTY


ISDOM by Eloise Tweeten


Eloise@TweetenEldercare.com Know an Elder? 707-570-2589


Sonoma County, CA. ~ Mia Ruhm, 94, was born in Vienna, Austria in 1922. She grew up in a privileged family and at- tended convent school until age 16 when her family abrupt- ly left the country when Hitler invaded Austria.


Her parents


were devout Catholics but her grandparents were Jewish and Hitler’s government did


not


discriminate between the two. Mia’s parents immigrated to France and then Brazil while she was sent to a convent in England to study English. She loved the country, and was ac- cepted to Oxford University where she fi rst studied social work but then transferred and graduated with a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Eco- nomics (PPE), the fi rst such program of its kind internation- ally.


Notable graduates from


this program include former U.S. President Bill Clinton and former U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, among others. As part of her degree pro- gram, Mia needed to gain work experience after completing her formal studies and went to work for BBC Monitoring Service for two years; an or- ganization which was formed in 1939 to provide the British Government with access to for- eign media and propaganda. It provided the government with valuable


information during


World War II, particularly in places where foreign journal- ists were banned. Mia was then recruited by the Offi ce of Stra- tegic Services (OSS), a precur- sor to the Central Intelligence Agency, to serve as a translator for the Nuremberg Trials. In this role, she read and


translated various transcripts, and then became a research li-


“There is nothing to prove to anyone, just concentrate on your own needs.” ~― Stephen Richards UPBEAT TIMES, INC. • February 2017 • 11


brarian for the organization. After several years with OSS,


Mia’s mother moved to New York and asked Mia to live with her, so they were reunited for a year while Mia worked for Time Magazine as a librar- ian.


Apple nor moving back in with family


However, neither the Big after so many years


away appealed to her, so Mia returned to England where she met and married her husband, John, in 1950. He was from Danzig,


a semi-autonomous


city-state that existed between 1920 and 1939, which is now Gdansk, Poland. John wanted to move to the U.S. but Mia


TM


Immigrant’s Story


An Interview with Mia Ruhm


agreed only if they lived as far away from New York as possi- ble, so they settled in San Fran- cisco and Mia has lived in the Greater Bay Area ever since. She fell in love with this West Coast city, where their children Liz and Christopher were born and they lived for fi ve years until becoming naturalized citi- zens. From there, they moved to Palo Alto where Mia worked for Stanford University as a re- search secretary. Her favorite assignment was her last, work- ing for a Chinese professor at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, a public policy think tank and research


An


TM


UPBEAT TIMES, INC. • February 2017 • 11


institution on the Stanford cam- pus. Mia decided it was time to retire as computers were entering


the working


world. Her daughter,


Liz, infl u- enced her decision to leave


her


home of 50 years and move to Oakmont in 2015.


As Liz indi- cated when she


fi rst contacted


me for this column, her


mother has viewed her life “as a grand adventure and never felt sorry for herself,” despite the dramatic change from a very comfortable life growing up to being “as poor as a church mouse.” Mia said she learned to “accept life the way it comes


and to not be surprised.” With that comment, I couldn’t help but ask what she thought about the current political climate in the


U.S.,


to which she re- plied, “the less said, the bet- ter.”


So be it!


Refl ect- ing on her life so far, Mia’s fondest memories are of the friends


she’s made through the years, wherever she’s lived or trav- eled. Regarding marriage, she learned to accept her husband for who he was and embrace their differences. He didn’t particularly like to travel so ... continued on page 23


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