Paloma C. H. Larramendi died peacefully in her sleep on Monday, August 1st in her home in Evanston, Illinois. She remained active and independent until her very last moments. Paloma’s loving husband of 58 years, Dr. Luis Manuel Hernando de Larramendi, passed away in November of 2011. She is survived by her elder brother Rafael and his wife Carmen, her two loving daughters Ana and Paloma, her son-in-law Mark, her two grandchildren Liam and Hayden, their wives, Melissa and Tracy, as well as her three great-grandchildren, Kai, Miles and Serena.
Paloma was born in Madrid, Spain on December 30, 1929, the youngest and only daughter among five siblings. She enjoyed a comfortable well-to-do childhood until the age of seven when the Spanish civil war broke out. The war ravaged the country and divided families along the civil war’s political fault lines. As a result, her father, a banker, was forced to move into and under the protection of the Romanian embassy, a neutral zone for the duration of the war. Her mother was left in the care of their five children. They left everything behind and hurriedly moved out of their large apartment in central Madrid when the battle zone arrived at their doorstep and shots hit their balcony. During this chaotic period, her mother moved the family multiple times, eventually taking a refugee train filled with mothers and children out of the civil war zone in the summer of 1936 when Paloma’s mother bravely led the children across the country on a train where they boarded a boat to France along with other Spanish refugees, only to be rejected as France closed its borders as part of a “non-interventionist” policy. The French redirected the refugees onto trains laden with Red Cross supplied food and back into Spain behind the battle lines where they stayed with Franco supporting relatives in the cold Asturias region until the end of the war and their return to Madrid.
Young children view war and crises through a different lens than adults. While still in an actively bombed Madrid, the family was at one point housed for safety in the storage facilities of a relative’s mattress factory. By this time, all formal schooling had stopped. The children were largely left to their own devices. Under the creative leadership of her older brothers they invented many diversions. Paloma would fondly recall how she and her brothers entertained themselves playing in the factory catching mice and stacking up huge piles of mattresses then jumping onto them from the rafters –It was one of her happiest times. Her mother, on the other hand, spent her days in lines trying to forage food for the family. Food was scarce and the black market prices fierce. Paloma remembers her mother coming back at the end of a long, dangerous day with two eggs which constituted the only source of protein the family of six had seen in some time. There was not enough food to be found in the under siege city, especially for her growing teenage brothers, and soon they all had sores and other evidence of malnutrition. Since money was not available, Paloma learned to sew and embroider so that she and her mother could make children’s clothing and other handcrafts to sell and help feed their family. Her incredible skills in this area continued to develop and her crafts became a lifelong joy and creative expression. Her home and that of her children and grandchildren are filled with her artistic handiwork.
After the war, Paloma’s family did not recover financially, so she and her mother continued to help the family coffers through their sewing and crafts, at one point focusing on a contract for high-end hand crafted doll clothing. Her father struggled to find work, but he helped her develop another lifelong passion. As she and her mother sat bent over their sewing, her father would read French and Spanish poetry and classic fiction to them. Again, instead of drudgery, she loved hearing her father’s gentle voice and this was a fond memory of a time that otherwise might have been remembered harshly. She in turn memorized the poetry, and later would win school and local prizes for her poetry readings. She would spontaneously recall and dramatically give voice to these poems until her last days. The family (with help from relatives) made great efforts to help her brothers complete their schooling. Her oldest brother Felipe played classical violin and eventually went to medical school. He made connections with many classical musicians, and the family home became a gathering place for weekly music sessions, primarily string quartets, and occasional concert pianists.
It was at one of these events that Paloma met her brother’s medical school friend, Luis Manuel “Manolo”, a young doctor who shared her love for classical music and poetry. A long 7 year courtship followed, during which Paloma, at Manolo’s urging, studied microscopy techniques for neuroscience at the Cajal Institute in Madrid, a pioneering institution. When Manolo went to Switzerland to further study neuroanatomy and the new technologies emerging in that field, he was offered a grant to study at McGill University under a luminary in the field. Paloma and Manolo were hurriedly married on June 3, 1953, in the Basilica de la Concepcion, around the corner from her home so Paloma could follow Manolo to Montreal, Canada, where he completed his PHD under the Nobel laureate, thus beginning a distinguished career conducting foundational research into the anatomy and development of neural-synapses. Paloma’s resourcefulness and gleeful spirit undoubtedly helped the young couple to survive on a post-doctoral student’s stipend during the cold Canadian winter. The next spring their first daughter, Paloma, was born. The following year the family moved to New York City, and then to Chicago, where Paloma would start her own career as an electron-microscope technician first as her husband’s technician at the University of Illinois Medical Center, then on her own at Northwestern University, and finally at the Rush University Medical Center from which she retired as faculty. Paloma was acknowledged as a superb problem solving technician by the many researchers who used her electron microscopy lab’s services. She pioneered new methods for processing and photographing ultra-thin (1-2 micron) biological samples. She loved her work, and her innovations were published in academic journals. Paloma was well regarded by her colleagues and students. Once retired, Paloma shared her talents and love for the natural world with her adoring twin grandchildren, she studied and played classical recorder with a small chamber group from the Chicago Music Institute in Evanston, and continued to play with the same group for the next 20 years giving local concerts. Her last concert was shortly before her death. She swam laps regularly until her mid-80’s, and contributed her time and energy as a volunteer working with crafts at the nearby not-for-profit Evanston Presbyterian Home. No one who knew her well can forget that Paloma was also a fantastic chef and gracious host – a passion and art she passed on to her younger daughter Ana. Paloma will be best remembered for her infectious enthusiasm, her indefatigable curiosity, her magnificent craftsmanship, her prodigious memory for songs and poems from her childhood, and her boundless compassion and affection for her family, friends and those in need.
A memorial and celebration of Paloma’s life will be held on August 26, 2016 from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. at The Music Institute of Chicago, 1490 Chicago Avenue, Evanston, IL 60201. The celebration will include music led by her long time music teacher and friend Patrick O’Malley.