MaryLou Grimberg

Grimberg, MaryLou (Lyons), of Harpenden, United Kingdom, passed away in Brookline, MA on January 27, 2025. Unconventional, brilliant, funny, and an adventurer, MaryLou lived a life on two continents. She left home at 17, studied Hebrew and worked on a kibbutz for a year in the late 1950s, and travelled by freight train to Moscow in 1957 to experience the world festival of youth and students.

In April 1960, she met Singaporean Joseph Grimberg at a party in London. They married that September and went to live in Singapore. During her years in South East Asia, she had five children and became a book editor. She would go on to write a book about the sports and games of the region. Later in life, she would write poetry. Several of her poems were included in anthologies published by The Poets of Highgate. One of her poems won an award that was presented to her by Spike Milligan’s wife.

In her 50s, MaryLou went to college, got an undergraduate degree and then earned a PhD in linguistics at University College London. She went on to lecture at the University of Hertfordshire. In her retirement, she volunteered as an editor for Jewish Renaissance magazine and as a docent at the Jewish Museum in London. She also organized a knitting group of her church-going neighbors to knit blankets for poor Jews in Ukraine.

Throughout her life, MaryLou loved learning languages. She learned German, Latin, and French in school. She studied Hebrew in Israel. She learned Malay and Mandarin while living in Singapore. She took up Italian because she wanted to read Primo Levi in his original language. She studied Akkadian because she wanted to read the ancient text Gilgamesh as it was written. She learned Yiddish and fell in love with Yiddish poetry. Many of her grandchildren called her Nonna, because of her love of Italian. One of her grandsons was so inspired and influenced by her interest in Akkadian that he is studying it too.

MaryLou was kind and generous to people she knew and strangers she didn’t, providing a lifeline to those who needed help getting back on their feet and offering guidance and support to young people trying to figure out a way forward in life.

She was also a fierce believer in the rights of animals and a strict vegan. She loved and cherished her many dogs and cats, who were so lucky to have her. She also enjoyed riding and for many years rode her horse Ben through the Hertfordshire countryside, sometimes stopping for lunch at country pubs, tethering Ben outside.

Throughout her life, MaryLou was up for new challenges and adventures. In her fifties, she learned to fly gliders over the Dunstable Downs. Around the same time, she climbed Mount Kinabalu, the highest mountain in Malaysia. She went white water rafting in the American South. She learned to scuba dive. In 1975, when her eldest three children were 10, 9, and 7, she took them by river boat into the jungles of Borneo to stay with the Iban, the indigenous people of Sarawak.

MaryLou is survived by her beloved children Sharon, Ruth, Adam, Deborah, and Dana and by her ten grandchildren of whom she was very proud: Jake, Mischa, Bren, Moe, Talia, Ben, Toby, Sam, Noah, and Emma. MaryLou is also survived by her dear sons-in-law Peter Frumkin, Allan Stevenson, Mark Franklin, Eddie McFall, and daughter-in-law, Helen Grimberg. MaryLou also leaves her much loved niece Katie Lyons-Duncanson, her great niece Shiloh, and her cousin Joan Hootman. Marylou’s sister Hetty Lyons predeceased her.

In lieu of flowers, donations in MaryLou’s memory may be made to World Jewish Relief.