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Anni Talwani Obituary
Anni Talwani
passed away, surrounded by family, in a Los Angeles-area hospital May 2. She was 77.
She is remembered by friends and family in Houston and around the world as a loving wife, mother, grandmother, hostess and writer, who touched many with her graciousness and generosity and extensive tales of her extraordinary life.
She was born Anna Elizabeth Fittler in Neuhofen,a town on the plains of Rhineland-Pfalz, Germany, in 1936,and was raised as World War II raged around her.In 1953, aged 17 and speaking little English, she first came to America,entering at the port of Hoboken, N.J.
In 1958, she married Manik Talwani in New York City, and they celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary just a month before her death. Anni cherished the memory of her lengthy stays with Manik's family in his native India, small children in tow, in the 1960s.
She was deeply engaged in and supportive of Manik's career as a scientist and professor, first at Columbia University and later at Rice University. She studied at Columbia University.
They raised three children in the New York area, living there for nearly three decades.
Anni and Manik moved to Houston in 1983. It remained their home base amid their travel around the world and five-years of part-time residence in Washington, D.C. Anni made many visits to family in German and India and Massachusetts,California and Montana.
Manik's work brought him to the remotest corners of the planet and some of its most advanced labs, and Anni in later years especially was able to join on many trips. The entire family witnessed the 1972 launch of Apollo 17, thanks to Manik's invention of a device that was used on that mission and remains on the moon.
Together Anni and Manik navigated blizzards on mountain roads in the Andes, Alps and Rockies, visited islands in the Arctic Ocean and explored Kamchatka, beyond Siberia. They have visited lands too numerous to list - China, Russia, the Faeroe Islands, Taiwan, Australia and Israel, to name just a few. In 2012, they spent a month at the National Institute of Oceanography in Goa, in the south of India.
She first fell in love with Montana in 1991 in Glacier National Park, with the trail to Grinnell Glacier a particular favorite. She returned to Montana dozens of times, including several lengthy stays in Helena since 2010. Many of her happiest moments were spent above the timberline, among the glaciers and peaks of Montana, as well as Canada, Europe and Nepal.
She retainedstrong loyalties to family and friends in Germany.She kept close contact for some 60 years with her childhood friends andtook pride in her German heritage. She attained United States citizenship in 1970. When asked where she was from, she was often amused to point out to her questioners that she'd lived in America longer than they had.
Her happiest moments of all were among her family, particularly her eight grandchildren. She loved hearing them practice and perform at piano and other instruments and she continued hiking and playing with them until just weeks before her death. She was scheduled to attend the college graduation of her oldest grandchild, Natasha, later this month.
She wrote short stories, plays and screenplays, and enjoyed having some of her work performed by a theater company in Houston.
She is preceded in death by three brothers and three sisters in Germany and Canada. She is survived by her husband, Manik Talwani, of Houston; son Rajeev Talwani of Los Angeles, his wife, Carolyn McKnight, and their children Milo, Lucy and Jasper;daughter Indira Talwani of Newton, Mass., her husband, Tod Cochran, and their children Natasha, Shelton and Nicolas; her son Sanjay Talwani of Helena and his wife, Danna Jackson, and their children Zane and Sonja; her sister, Annaliese Blum of Limburgerhof, Germany; and many nieces, nephews and cousins. We are all grateful that she was able to spend much of her later years with her grandchildren leaving them with lifelong memories of a grandmother whose love knew no bounds.
Memorial services will be held later in Houston.
To plant trees in memory, please visit the Sympathy Store.
Published by Houston Chronicle on May 7, 2013