American. Born Constantinople, Turkey. grew up in Seattle in a bilingual Ladino and English household. Developed an interest in the scholarly study of Ladino culture, including linguistics and music. Wrote a master thesis in 1935 at Univ. of Washington on A study of the Linguistic Characteristics of Seattle Sefardi Folklore. She incorporated an audio section which was field work and recorded Sephardic women from the Seattle community, including Spanish canticas and romansas, Turkish songs and Ladino songs. The University of Washington had the recordings transferred to better archival storage in 1981.