Email This PageJeannette Defrance Streit Rohatyn ’46
Jeannette Defrance Streit Rohatyn ’46 died on April 8. Rohatyn was a former Board Manager from 1977 to
1980. She was known for opening her home for alumni activities on many occasions. Born in France, Rohatyn was the daughter of a French mother and American father. She completed her education in the United States, and by the time she graduated from Swarthmore in 1946, had acquired Spanish in addition to French and English. For much of her life, she was an interpreter in Spanish and French for the United Nations General Assembly and the U.N. Security Council, among other organizations. She was known for her dramatic translation style. She did not interpret just speech but also gestures, which meant banging her fist on the table in the interpreter’s booth if the speaker was doing so. She was one of the first simultaneous interpreters as well as the youngest. She traveled to many parts of the world as a freelance interpreter. She created many scholarships and awards, among them the Baudelaire Award, which allows for French majors to travel to that country; the Clarence K. Streit Scholarship, named for her father, whose ideas were made public in three Cooper Foundation lectures at Swarthmore; and the Jeanne DeFrance Streit book fund, named for her mother.
