In Memoriam: Enid Standring
Enid Standring, one of our most stalwart charter members, died November 22, 2005.
She was raised in Bolton, Lancashire and was a member of the WRENS during World War II. Fluent in German, as well as French, she worked as a translator at the Nuremberg Trials, 1945-1946. After her Ph.D.in Comparative Literature, N.Y.U., she taught French at Montclair State College, (now, University), 1960-1983.
Retired, she returned to Montclair State to pursue a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in music. The clarinet was her instrument, and during those years she played in the Bloomfield Band of N.J. and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, as well as giving two recitals on the Montclair campus.
Enid is remembered fondly by her colleagues and friends Madeleine Sergent and Murray Present who recall her active, long-standing membership in the Cosmopolitain Club, a Montclair group devoted to community life and people of other cultures ,integrating them into the town, helping with housing and social adjustment.
Madame Sergent speaks of Enid’s passion for justice and her activism in liberal causes. Mr. Present, her friend, professor, in the Music department lauds her gift for loyal friendship, generosity and dependability, as well as her “fabulous” dinner parties where she entertained her many friends.
Every summer she visited her sister and her niece in the north of England, eventually to retire, near them, in Grange-over-Sands (!) , in Cambria, where she was happy and took pleasure phoning all her friends in Montclair and elsewhere. She died in the retirement home.
We Sandistes know of her passion for George. It was manifest in all the conferences she attended. So did her friends and colleagues. They also remark on her great loyalty to the Monclair French department and her students.
“Delicate, reservee, pleine de vie et de curiosite intellectuelle, joyful, generous, entertaining. On pouvait compter sur elle.” Madeleine Sergent’s eloquence is a fine tribute to our departed friend.
By Marie M.Collins, Rutgers-Newark, November 2007