 | Natalia Fernandez Segarra with her grandson, Shane,
son of Elena MacCartee '90 |
By John Ruch
"She was one of those personalities that stick in your mind. She was a hot ticket, you know?" says mathematics teacher Tilesy Harrington, recalling former Spanish teacher Natalia Fernandez Segarra.
Harrington is just one of many former colleagues who clearly remember Segarra (who went by the last name of Weiss when she started teaching) as a fearlessly opinionated, charismatic and friendly teacher.
Reached via e-mail at her current job heading an art museum in Spain, Segarra quickly made it clear that her personality hasn't changed a bit. Asked for a brief autobiographical note, she immediately included that she is "a Democrat. Voted for Kerry."
"I've always been a fighter," Segarra said. "Also on the left side of politics, so some of my interventions were perhaps a bit controversial."
Segarra, 63, was born in the Dominican Republic to Spanish parents, but became a US citizen. She came to Nobles in 1975 as the School's first Spanish teacher under Modern Languages department head Michel Bevillard.
"I applied and got the job to create the Spanish department, set up the program and eventually hired other Spanish teachers. I thrive on challenges. I was new to New England, from New York City," Segarra said, adding, "The preppie, New England life was unknown to me."
She ended up staying for 15 years (the same number that she's been gone), a period in which she also served as a Nobles summer camp counselor. "Thanks to the patience of many, I was actually a crew and soccer coach," Segarra recalled, adding she was "horrendous at it, but enjoyed it as another learning experience."
"I have very fond memories of Nobles and many former colleagues"---and, most of all, of her students, "who kept me young and going," Segarra said. She invites them all to visit her in Spain---or at least contact her at natalia@fundacion-granell.org.
It would be an understatement to say Segarra made an impression during her tenure. Harrington and math teacher Bill Kehlenbeck both remember Segarra joining meetings of department heads---even though she wasn't one herself---and giving the administrators some straight talk.
"She had opinions and let people know what they were," Harrington said. "It was neat to see a woman speak up. It was still a very male-dominated administration back then. She encouraged a lot of us to speak up. She gave us a feeling that women count, too."
Dick Baker, English teacher and former Head of School, said Segarra struck him as "fiery, charismatic...intense."
"I think of her as a fairly politicized woman...liberal verging on radical," he said, adding she was a strong feminist as well.
Kehlenbeck said Segarra was "capable of good-natured irreverence when someone, or the entire institution, took him/her/itself too seriously for her tastes."
But Segarra is remembered for much more than that. Kehlenbeck said she was also a strong supporter of the Nobles art scene, attending many exhibit openings, plays and concerts.
He said she also "made a great effort to create an inclusive social environment among an increasingly diverse group of teachers. She hosted frequent parties and informal get-togethers at her home in Lexington [Mass.], where we gathered to eat, sip wine, talk, laugh and get to know one another."
Baker also recalled her strong teaching as part of "the vanguard of a new kind of language teaching, which was much less formulaic, focused on actually speaking the language and encouraging travel to Spanish-speaking countries."
Of course, Segarra eventually did some traveling herself, moving to Spain in 1990. "My sense is one of the reasons she left Nobles is because she wanted to get out of America," said Baker. Pretty close to the truth, Segarra said, explaining Spain's political climate at the time made her want to see for herself what it was like living "under a new, fresh Socialist government."
She now resides in Santiago de Compostela, the main city of the Galicia area in northwest Spain, named for a shrine to St. James who, according to legend, is buried there.
Segarra is director of Santiago's Fundacion E. Granell, a surrealism-focused art museum and foundation founded in 1995 by her late father, Eugenio Fernandez Granell.
Granell, himself a surrealist artist, also collected works in the style. The museum's collection includes an especially fine collection of Philip West pieces along with works by Miro, Duchamp, Max Ernst and other well-known artists. Granell's own work rounds out the surrealist collection. There is also a collection of Afro-Cuban masks and American Indian pieces.
Besides exhibiting and housing the collection, the Fundacion maintains a library, publishes texts and hosts concerts and other events.
As director, Segarra organizes exhibits, gives talks on her father's work, and catalogues and researches the collection.
After divorcing Steve Weiss, her husband in the Nobles days, Segarra has remained single. "Spanish men my age are too machista (male chauvinist) and not very interesting," she said, explaining that she prefers to spend her time working and visiting her children and grandchild.
Daughter Elena Weiss MacCartee '90 lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband Billy MacCartee and Segarra's grandson, Shane. Another grandchild is on the way in February. Son Alex Weiss lives in Oakland, CA.
"I want to return to the States," Segarra said. "It is my home. But now I have this responsibility that I enjoy." She added she also likes the country's free health care, noting, "The medical system is something we could improve in the USA." If she does return to the US, she said, she would like to run a used book store.
While acknowledging she found Nobles to be "conservative," she credited the school and the US in general for spurring a sense of individual action within her. "The lasting influence is the way America works on an individual basis," she said. "Fostering initiative has helped me on this job as director of a [museum], something totally new for me, and another challenge. Spain is not the same, so what I have learned both at Nobles and [in] the USA has been fabulous. My initiative is unknown here, so I've earned some points."
Meanwhile, Segarra is obviously set on giving Spain the same sort of spark she contributed to Nobles in a different era.
"People here in Galicia are famous for not being straight-nothing is ever answered straight," she said. "A question is answered with another question. A bottle is neither full nor empty. You are neither going up or down. I have been working with the same group of people, and I still don't know which political party they belong to.
"Although they all know I am a Socialist card-carrying person."
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