Marjorie Mondecar, art teacher who ‘loved her students’

By J.E. Geshwiler

For the AJC

Art was not a subject to be sloughed off, not the way Marjorie Mondecar taught it at three Atlanta public schools.

“Mom had high standards,” said her daughter, Flora Mondecar of Atlanta. “Not only did she give her students mid-term and final exams, she gave them quizzes every Friday and made them write two art reports each quarter. And she expected them to perform well.”

This is not to say she was a drill sergeant in class. “Mom loved her students and spoke fondly of them all the time,” said her son, David Mondecar of Marietta. Over her 15-year career here, she taught at Grady High and Howard and Smith high schools, both of which have since closed.

For years Mrs. Mondecar liked to paint portraits. Not long after she retired in 1986, she discovered another form of artistic expression — calligraphy. After taking just one course, she began giving calligraphy instruction to classes of seniors, a vocation she kept up for more than 20 years. “I suspect her background as an art teacher helped her to pick up the fundamentals of calligraphy so quickly,” said Carol Gray of Avondale Estates, a fellow member of Friends of the Alphabet, an Atlanta-based society of calligraphers.

Mrs. Mondecar, 87, of Atlanta, died Oct. 18 at Hospice Atlanta of complications following a stroke. Her memorial will be at 4 p.m. today at Covenant Presbyterian Church. Cremation Society of the South is in charge of arrangements. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Atlanta Union mission.

An Indiana native, Mrs. Mondecar graduated from DePauw University, then attended graduate school at Northwestern University.

“Mom was so disgusted with a professor she had who was crazy for art deco that she quit and left for New York to study at the Art Students League,” Flora Mondecar said. “After a while she came to realize she didn’t have the creativity to be a freelance artist, and she chose to teach art instead.”

While in New York, she met and married Ernest Mondecar, also an artist. The marriage dissolved in 1967, and she decided to take her three children with her to Atlanta, lured by friends who were moving here and by the promise of warm weather. Working as a department store clerk in the daytime and going to Georgia State University at night, she gradually completed the requirements that enabled her to teach.

Mrs. Mondecar thought nothing of singing aloud while out in public. Her son recalled that once when she was vocalizing in an Ansley Mall grocery, a woman in a nearby aisle called out, “I’d know that voice anywhere,” and it turned out to be Mrs. Mondecar’s roommate at Northwestern, Beth Stedman, whom she hadn’t seen in 20 years.

She also was a treasure hunter of other people’s discards. “Mom would look through Dumpsters and scour her neighborhood on trash days looking for things that were reusable. For instance, she’d find clothes she would launder or have cleaned and then give them to thrift stores serving the needy,” said her daughter, Mercedes Mondecar of Atlanta.

Survivors also include two grandchildren.