Donna Bergheim, Professor And Virginia Aarts Advocate, 84, Washington Post

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/04/AR2010040402699.html

DONNA F. BERGHEIM, 84

Donna Bergheim, professor and Virginia arts advocate, dies

By Matt Schudel, Washington Post Staff Writer

April 5, 2010

Donna F. Bergheim, a onetime Foreign Service officer and college professor
who became an advocate for the arts in Alexandria and throughout Virginia,
died March 27 [2010] of congestive heart failure at Capital Hospice in
Arlington County. She was 84.

Dr. Bergheim became active in various arts groups soon after moving to
Alexandria in 1960. She served on the board of directors of MetroStage and
helped convert an old lumber warehouse into MetroStage's 150-seat theater.
The theater was named for her in 2001.

In 1993, Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder named Dr. Bergheim to a five-year
term as a member of the Virginia Commission for the Arts. In that position,
Dr. Bergheim evaluated arts programs and helped award grants to
organizations throughout the state.

Closer to home, she worked with the Alexandria Arts Safari, an arts and
crafts event for children, and the Alexandria Commission for the Arts, which
presented its Alex Award to Dr. Bergheim in 2004. The Alexandria Commission
for Women presented her with an award for her contributions to the arts in
1994. In a 2008 ceremony, Dr. Bergheim and her husband, former Alexandria
vice mayor Mel Bergheim, were recognized as "Living Legends of Alexandria."

Donna Rose Feldman was born in South Bend, Ind., and moved to Tucson as a
girl. She graduated from the University of Arizona in 1945 and received a
master's degree in English from the university in 1948. She received a
doctorate in speech and drama from the University of Iowa in 1953 and was an
authority on the works of Shakespeare.

While completing her graduate studies, Dr. Bergheim moved to Washington in
1951 and worked with the U.S. Information Agency's motion-picture service.
From 1955 to 1957, she was a Foreign Service officer in Japan and Burma and
helped arrange appearances in Asia by performing arts groups, including
ballets, classical ensembles and Benny Goodman's jazz band. She also helped
coordinate a visit to Japan by novelist William Faulkner in 1955.

Dr. Bergheim worked for Voice of America in Washington before becoming an
assistant cultural attache at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City in 1958. She
resigned from the State Department in 1959, when she married. State
Department rules at the time did not allow married women to hold
professional positions in the Foreign Service.

After raising four children, Dr. Bergheim taught literature, speech and
drama at Southeastern University from 1977 to 1985. She was head of the
university's department of communication arts and humanities and director of
its preparatory college from 1985 to 1988.

In addition to her husband of 50 years, survivors include four children,
Beth B. Silver of Alexandria, Laura A. Bergheim of Los Altos, Calif., Maria
L. Bergheim of Leesburg and David A. Bergheim of San Diego; two brothers;
and four grandsons.