By Elia Esparza
August 26, 1926 – May 20, 2020
Born in Hamburg, Germany to Spanish parents the same year as Marilyn Monroe and Queen Elizabeth, this remarkable woman began a journey that eventually brought her to North Hollywood, CA. Carmen Jiménez Friedman is the mother of veteran film and TV actress, Julie Carmen, and throughout the years, many people in the film and television industry came to know her.
Born Carmen Emma Jiménez to parents Adólfo Jiménez and Elisabeth Jiménez (nee Neubauer). Her father was in the raw cocoa bean import business and later became the Honorary Consul of Spain. Her mother was an obstetric nurse who had taken care of wounded soldiers during World War I. Both of her parents were Spanish citizens living in Hamburg and were fluent in Spanish, German, French, and English. Her father was an excellent cellist and a friend of Pablo Casals. She herself was passionate about playing the violin and studied at the Madrid Conservatory and the Mannes School in New York.
On her father’s side, she descended from four generations of Afro-Cuban classical musicians. Her grandfather José Manuel (Lico) Jiménez Berroa was a child prodigy pianist, composer, and professor at the Hamburg Conservatory.
According to her daughter Julie, “Composer Lico Jimenez was a family hero for many reasons. A Cuban black man being Director of Composition at Hamburg Conservatory for 30 years and bringing German Lied music back to Cuba, influencing Cuban danzón and even Chucho Valdes and his son Chuchito Valdes recorded songs called Evocación a Lico Jiménez.”
Carmen Jiménez Friedman earned her Master’s degree from New York University in Spanish and German Literature and Education. She won the 2000 Mercedes-Benz Mentor Award from the Fulfillment Fund for Excellence in Mentoring, an award handed to her by Antonio Banderas, of which she felt very proud. Well into her nineties she loved reading the latest books in German and Spanish, including everything by women authors Maria Dueñas and Julia Montejo. She frequently accompanied her daughter to screenings and lectures because “She found them stimulating.” Carmen Jiménez Friedman was a deep thinker, a high school teacher, a scholar, and a humanist.
Carmen Jiménez Friedman was married to Leonard, who preceded her in death in 2008, and is survived by her beloved children, son George Friedman-Jimenez, MD, DrPH; daughter-in-law Rosa Nelly Lavergne, PhD; daughter Julie Carmen Hoffman, son-in-law Gary Hoffman and her four grandchildren, Zayani Lavergne-Friedman, Camille Safiya (Marc Anthony Robinson), Benjamin Hoffman and Anita Hoffman.
Julie Carmen shared this about her mother:
“Until her final days, my mother had a visceral reaction to the current global trend towards dictatorships, oligarchies, racism and ignorance. During World War II, at the age of 15, she and her mother fled Germany to Spain. She’d seen how too many people turned a blind eye to the extermination of millions of people, brutal hatred and division. During her 30 years as a high school Spanish and German teacher, she influenced students at North Plainfield High School, John Burroughs High School in Burbank, and the Buckley School in Sherman Oaks to not repeat those aspects of 20th Century European history.”
Señora Friedman, as her Buckley students called her, was known for her joy of learning, her beauty, her warmth, and especially her remarkable ability to focus on the good things about almost any person or situation.
In lieu of flowers, Carmen’s family suggest making a donation to the Chalice Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Conejo Valley Capital Campaign where she was a vibrant member of the congregation and they shared her philosophical values, and/or to the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. CLICK HERE for the links.