30/05/2012
Elsa M. Krochmal Dies at 79
Honduran Teacher, Education Reformer, Artist and Mother
Elsa Krochmal, 79, mother of Maurice M. and Walter L. Krochmal, died Thursday, May 24, 2012 in The Bronx, NY, at Morningside House, where she was a resident since 2007. She is survived by two sons, Maurice, 54, and Walter, 52, both of New York City and a sister, Almeyda Cabrera of Puerto Rico.
She was the daughter of Mercedes Pineda and Cristóbal Cabrera, and was preceeded in death by her brother, Orlando Cabrera, of Tegucigalpa, Honduras. She also had eight half brothers and sisters: Norma, Cristóbal, Carlos, Wilfredo, Orfilia, Erica, Gladys and Edgar.
She was born March 18th, 1933 in San Francisco de Ojuera, department of Santa Bárbara, Honduras. The region is known as the home for a community of Sephardic Jews. The town is known as “The Junco Capital”, where master artisans wove junco reed into the Honduran equivalent of Panama hats. She spent her infancy with an extended family of 25 on a farm where the family,
headed by her uncle Napoleón, raised livestock (cows, horses, chickens) as well as running a drug store.
She spent her early childhood years in San Pedro Sula, in the home of her uncle Napoleón Pineda. She married Dr. Arnold Krochmal in December 1956. That marriage ended in divorce in 1969.
Mrs. Krochmal, selected as one of the top teaching students in Central America upon her graduation from high school, earned a scholarship to attend American University in Washington, DC, and Arizona State College in Tempe, Ariz., where she earned a degree in 1956.
One of her friends there, a Chinese student, introduced her to her future husband, Arnold, at a campus foreign student event. They married on Dec. 21, 1956. Her husband-to-be, a member of Arizona State faculty, established the horticulture program there.
Mrs. Krochmal became a naturalized citizen of the United States in ceremonies in Arizona.
She and her husband moved to Afghanistan in 1957, where Arnold served as chief research advisor for the University of Wyoming agricultural research team in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Mrs. Krochmal set up housekeeping in Kabul in a home made of earthen bricks, surrounded by a mud wall and protected by "Listo," a huge Afghan bull mastiff dog, and a cat to control the rats. She had a household staff headed by Kayum, at 20, the house "boy." She surprised people throughout her life with her knowledge of the Pashto and Farsi languages acquired there, and particularly
relished telling how one day, as she walked the streets of Kabul without a veil – a grave offense in Islamic society-- a group of Afghans mistook her for one of their own and almost stoned her. She defused the tension with her language skills, wits and charm.
Her Kabul home had electricity, a small refrigerator and running water, but drinking water had to be gathered daily, pumped into a tin container from the American embassy's deep well.
Her first son, Maurice, was born in 1957 and taken home in a peach crate.
The Krochmals departed Kabul in 1959, when Arnold Krochmal accepted a position as a Park Ranger in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, based in Cullowhee, N.C.. Their second son, Walter, was born there in 1960.
The Krochmals moved to El Zamorano, Honduras in 1961 when Dr. Krochmal was named to head the horticulture department at the Escuela Agrícola Panamericana, Central America´s top horticultural teaching institution and one of the foremost in the world. Mrs. Krochmal set up housekeeping on the farm campus of the school, where she raised the boys and assisted her husband in
his academic life with dinners, teas and other social events for students and fellow faculty.
The Krochmals moved again in 1961, to the island of St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, where Dr. Krochmal joined the United States Department of Agriculture as a research scientist, stationed at the Kings Hill Agricultural Research Station, a fenced-in federal agricultural research farm set in the middle of sugar cane
fields.
There, visitors to the family home, located on Kings Hill overlooking the valley in the middle of the island, included US Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman, Democratic Senator Ga***rd Nelson from Washington who created the first Earth Day and others. The children grew brown in the Caribbean sunshine, guarded by “Chichí,” the red short-haired daschund, and “Lempira,” a wirehaired dachshund. The family also entertained friends and local dignitaries such as Gov. Ralph M. PIewansky at the home.
The family lived on St. Croix until 1966, when Dr. Krochmal was transferred to the Southeastern Research Station of Forest Service of the US Department of Agriculture in the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky. The raven-haired Mrs. Krochmal was often the first Latina woman people had ever met in these small
communities had ever met.
Mrs. Krochmal returned to Honduras in 1969 with Walter Krochmal. She resumed her teaching career at Instituto Hibueras, a public school in the capital city of Tegucigalpa where she taught English and Art. She remained in Honduras until 2005, when Nancy Green-Krochmal, Walter Krochmal's wife, helped her close down housekeeping and move to join her sons in New York City.
Mrs. Krochmal entered the Morningside House Community in 2007, where she became a popular presence at every activity and event, such as the chapel services (Christian and Jewish), activities including art, music, creative writing, tai chi and others. She soon became known to staff and other residents as "Mother
Nature," for the subjects of her art -- nature scenes and birds, in particular – and her knowledge of natural remedies.
At age 12, she was sent to the Pedagogical Studies program at the Normal Central School for Young Ladies in Tegucigalpa, the capital. Enrollment at this government-run school was regarded as a high honor for her and her family.
She studied and lived at the teaching school for five years and earned a bachelor's and a pedagogical diploma upon completion of her studies. She then worked in underdeveloped communities in rural areas of the country, sometimes riding a donkey to reach remote villages where she taught health, recreation and
art to the residents.
Within two years, she had helped open the first adult education school in Honduras as well as developing workshops and seminars in home economics. She later became an advocate for national educational reform.
Uno de los posibles secretos de la historia mundial es que algunas monarquías europeas sean descendientes directas e indirectas de familias judías, por lo menos desde los tiempos heterogéneos y pluralistas de los padres del emperador Carlomagno, fundador, a mediados del siglo ocho de nuestra era, de...
