Page 27 - Priorities #17 2001-October

Merrilyn A. Mecham, a teacher of French and department head of Modern Foreign Languages at the Priory, passed away from cancer on July 2 at her home in Palo Alto.
Among the more than 300 friends who gathered to celebrate her life were fellow members of the Peninsula Women’s Chorus, parents from Palo Alto’s Pre-School Family, colleagues from the Greenmeadow Scholarship Board, colleagues and students from the three schools where she has taught in recent
years, and many friends. Messages
arrived from people whose lives she had touched all over the world. The diverse gathering illustrates the many facets of Mrs. Mecham’s life.
She was born in Perth, Australia in 1944, and she grew up in what was then a quiet, rural town where her mother and most of her aunts, uncles and cousins still live. She has returned often and kept in close touch with these roots throughout her life. Her father, a member of the elite ZED special forces in the Australian military, died in World War II when his daughter was only four months old. Merrilyn and her mother maintained a two-woman household from then on.
She received her bachelor’s degree and teaching credential from the University of Western Australia with a major in French and minor in German. In the United States she later earned a master’s degree in French and an English as a Second Language (ESL) teaching credential. She used both credentials to teach at Gunn High School, Foothill College and Chabot College as well as Woodside Priory.
Anxious for adventure after college, she set out for three years of teaching English in Paris while she studied at the Sorbonne, followed by another year of teaching English in Germany. During this time, while vacationing in Greece, she met her husband-to-be, Doug Mecham. Six years later, on a second trip around the world, Doug brought Merrilyn to
Merrilyn Mecham 1944-2001
the U.S. Their son, Ross, will start law studies at Santa Clara University next year, and their daughter, Anne, who graduated from Woodside Priory in 1998, is studying microbiology at UC Santa Barbara.
A consummate teacher with high professional standards, Mrs. Mecham took great pride in keeping the foreign language programs at Woodside Priory on the leading edge of best-known teaching practices. She represented the Priory at numerous professional conferences, including a
recent international conference
focusing on the Pacific Rim countries. The children, teenagers and adults who took her classes, the teachers she supervised, and the many individuals who
sought her counsel will undoubtedly remember best that each individual always had her full attention and support. Even into the last weeks of her life, when she had great difficulty leaving her house, she was very involved with her students’ progress and the future of the languages department.
Her teaching materials, collected over 40 years of professional life, will be used in many schools in the area, and many of her French books will be available in the Priory library, so that her vision and influence will continue.
Among the last and happiest social gatherings for Merrilyn was a visit from more than a dozen Priory friends of all ages, who trooped into the Mecham family living room to sing songs. Although speaking had become an effort, Merrilyn joined in the singing and even tried to explain that unfamiliar Aussie national anthem, "Waltzing Matilda."
The Mecham family requested that memorial donations be made to Dr. Fisher at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation for cancer research or to Woodside Priory School for the foreign languages department.
—C. Dobervich
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