Trowbridge ‘zest for life’ recalled

BANGOR – Elizabeth “Jeem” Trowbridge, who smuggled documents about the Nanking massacre out of China in 1938 so the world would know about the atrocities committed during the Japanese occupation, had a thirst for knowledge and a zest for life.

That’s how friends remembered the former Bangor English teacher and well-known community volunteer, who died last week at the age of 91 in Pittsford, N.Y., after a brief illness.

“She wanted to have an adventure – an international experience,” said Ryan Bradeen of Bangor, who spent a number of years interviewing Trowbridge and transcribing letters she wrote as a 24-year-old working for the Chinese government in the late 1930s.

Bradeen, director of Maine Programs for Primary Source, a nonprofit organization that helps connect educators to East Asia, said Tuesday that he hopes to write a book that will put Trowbridge’s letters into historical context.

Longing for adventure, she boarded a freighter out of San Francisco in 1936 and headed for Shanghai, where she found a job editing a journal about Chinese railways for the government, according to Bradeen.

Living the privileged life of a foreigner, Trowbridge married an Australian newspaper correspondent and quickly became embroiled in a “huge international story,” he said.

“Her biggest claim to fame” is that she carried letters documenting the Nanking massacre of tens of thousands of Chinese back to the U.S. on the steamer and then circulated them among missionaries.

“Those documents were really critical to the understanding of the Nanking massacre,” he said, noting that the event wasn’t well known because press coverage was limited and the Japanese were trying to prevent an international response.

“She read the materials for the first time on the boat and one letter documents her reaction,” said Bradeen. “She was horrified.”

Trowbridge, a Vassar graduate who earned a master’s degree from the University of Maine, taught junior high and high school English in Bangor, and later became an avid community volunteer.

Barbara McDade, director of the Bangor Public Library, said Trowbridge would come in once a week to take on a variety of tasks that the staff didn’t have time for. She also helped create the Bangor Room – the library’s local history room.

“She was just a real lady and she was filled with curiosity and she herself knew so much,” said McDade. Even after moving to a local senior citizen facility, Trowbridge “would organize book discussions and invite me to come,” said McDade.

“She was always looking for things to stimulate her mind,” said Cynthia Smith, administrative coordinator for the elder division of Eastern Maine Health Care, recalling Trowbridge’s 20 years of volunteer work, checking in with senior citizens by telephone.

“Very seldom did she miss a day,” said Smith. “She’d get in her little red car and drive up State Street – it didn’t matter if it was snowing out. She was a trouper. She always made it.”

She was predeceased by her husband Dr. Mason Trowbridge.

She is survived by her three daughters Helen Hoffman of New York City, Elizabeth Wild of Fairport, N.Y., and Jane Burtrand of New Orleans; six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

A family memorial service will be held at a later date.