Mamae Teklamariam

RantWoman is reprinting almost verbatim a memorial post for a very influential person in the world of interpreting in Seattle. RantWoman did not personally know Mamae but emphatically wants her and her work to be remembered.

RantWoman also has especially morbid empathy about the subject of car vs pedestrian unpleasantness, particularly since RantWoman's experience is that pedestrian experience in other countries can be even more terrifying than it is in the US.


Dear Colleagues

It is with heavy heart that I write to tell you that Mamae Teklemariam was struck by a car in Addis Ababa yesterday afternoon and killed. I have no other details at this time.

Many of you will not know Mamae. But those who have been with the Council from the earliest days will remember that Mamae was active from the very first meeting of the National Working Group, and that she served on the first Board of the National Council as its Treasurer. She was an ardent champion of language services, locally and nationally, helping to build interpreter services and the Community Housecalls program at Harborview Medical Center, Seattle’s public hospital. In 1996, when nobody in Seattle was requiring interpreters to be trained, Mamae took the bold step of requiring all her interpreters – staff and freelancers – to take the then brand-new program, Bridging the Gap, upon pain of losing their contracts. They moaned and complained and threatened to leave her without an interpreter base, but Mamae was immovable, and in the end, they all attended BTG.


This is what was written of her by Dr. Carey Jackson, a colleague and language access champion at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle:

Mamae Teklemariam was born and raised in Addis, the daughter of an Eritrean father, an adviser to Emperor Haile Selasie, and an Ethiopian mother. She came to the U.S. as a young woman and graduated from San Jose State University, then went on to get her MPH in Maternal and Child Health at the University of Washington. She came to Harborview to do her Master's thesis, it was then I met her and we recruited her as one of the founding members of the Community HouseCalls Program. She played a critical role in the integration of services for the non-English speaking poor at Harborview. At one point she was the manager of International Medicine Clinic. She went on to integrate Interpreter Services, Community HouseCalls, and helped to establish EthnoMed. She worked at Harborview for 12 years before returning to Ethiopia to interface between the CDC and varied UW Global Health initiatives.



She was loved by many of us, a strong manager, strategic thinker, and valued colleague. Mamae had a delightful sense of humor, irreverent, compassionate, a strong sense of justice, and a very generous heart . . ..



I know that those of you who remember Mamae will join me in grieving her loss. For those who did not have the bounty of knowing her, perhaps you could give a moment of silence today for the passing of one of the early pioneers of our field.



Regards,
Cindy Roat