The memorial service will for certain be November 12 at 11 a.m. We will have a short service at St. Mark at 10 to bury the ashes.
Well, I'd like to add to all those who put things off. If you put off your obituary then you'll just have to settle for what someone else writes! While putting this together, and I've enclosed what I sent the paper below, I was struck by the irony of Olive being a writer, Mel being a writer, Dan being a writer -- and me, a not-writer, writing the obituary!
There are some inaccuracies, I don't believe she worked at Westat 10 years, but generally it's good. This was my version:
Olive Holmes Blum
Foreign Service Wife
Olive Holmes Blum, 89, a Foreign Policy Writer who lived for 34 years in the Washington DC area, died at Sibley Hospital on October 19 of Cardiovascular disease.
Olive Blum was born in Buenos Aires Argentina a American parents working as Methodist missionaries. She grew up in New York City where her father was a professor of Romance Languages at Columbia University.
She received a BA from Barnard College, and a Master Degree in International Relations from Columbia University in New York City. She was proficient in French, German, and Spanish. Until her marriage to Melvin Blum in 1953 she worked as a Foreign Policy Analyst at the Foreign Policy Association and the Voice of America.
During the McCarthy era in the 1950s Voice of America employees because the subject of investigation. Mrs. Blum, then Miss Holmes, attended a political meeting of employees and others to protest these investigations. It was there that she met Melvin Blum, an employee of the Ladies Garment Workers Union. They liked to say that had McCarthy not conducted his “witch hunts” they would never had met or married.
Mr. Blum joined the Foreign Service after their marriage, and Mrs. Blum accompanied him to South America where they were posted in Columbia and Argentina. While in the Foreign Service Mrs. Blum was a member of the Foreign Service Wives Association.
Upon returning to Washington Mrs. Blum worked as a travel agent in Bethesda, and then at Westat Corp. in Rockville where she translated health surveys into Spanish.
Mrs. Blum was an Elder and a Deacon at St. Mark Presbyterian church in Rockville MD. She was active in local and international mission programs including the Friends in Action program sponsored by Community Ministries and SOME in Bethesda.
She was also a participant in the Women’s Health Initiative, a study of women’s health sponsored by NIH.
Mrs. Blum was married to Melvin Blum who died in 1995. She is survived by her son, Daniel J. Blum, and two grandsons – Daniel and Thomas – all of Silver Spring, MD.
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This is what the paper ran. At present we believe the memorial service will be on Monday November 12 at 11 a.m. If I can get ahold of the Pastor at St. Mark I'll be able to get a time for the internment, which will be private.
