Mercedes Cunningham Monjian

Mercedes Cunningham Monjian of Longwood at Oakmont laughingly referred to herself as a dilettante, having been active in the fields of music, art, and writing, but never causing much of a stir.

As a senior at Duquesne High School, she placed first in the Greater Pittsburgh Division of the Pennsylvania Forensic League Piano Contest. She graduated from Carnegie Tech as a Piano performance major, and while in her senior year, was selected to play second piano in concert with Charles Wakefield Cadman, pianist, composer and well-known authority of American Indian music. Not wanting to teach, she went to Joseph Horne Co. and in time, advanced to fashion copywriter covering the New York fashion openings. For about six months, she worked with Andy Warhol.

She left Horne's to earn a Ph.D. in English at the University of Pittsburgh and had published, by the University Press, a critical work on the Pittsburgh poet Robinson Jeffers. She was amused when she discovered online that her little book had been translated and published in Arabic. She was employed by Westminster College as an Assistant Professor of English, and later taught at Pitt.

In the 1970's she exhibited her watercolors in local shows, including the Three Rivers Arts Festival.

In her last years she taught at the Osher Lifelong Learning institute at CMU and wrote for the residents at Longwood, and published a book of Poetry: The Poetry of Mercedes Monjian.

The daughter of Rebecca and Carroll Cunningham and widow of Gregory Monjian, she is survived by cousins, Shirley S. Rowley, Fern Thomas Yonke and Joyce Thomas (late Gerald Thomas). Funeral arrangements by John A. Freyvogel Sons, Inc. are pending at this time. (freyvogelfuneralhome.com)

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