Ingrid R. Freemon

Ingrid R. Freemon, a Tiburon resident for over 60 years, died at her home in January at age 95.

Born in Tallin, Estonia, in 1922, she and her family endured three occupations. After the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939, the Soviet Union occupied Estonia in 1940, beginning an era of repression and terror. After the Nazi invasion of Russia, the Germans drove the Soviets out of Estonia and a period of Nazi occupation began. Thence, in 1944, the Soviets returned and annexed the small Baltic state. Thousands of Estonians fled, including Ms. Freemon and her mother, who escaped on the last German boat to leave one of the Estonian islands; the two transports behind her were torpedoed by the Soviet military.

Mrs. Freemon spent the rest of the war in the International Red Cross and later studied dentistry, receiving a D.D.S. from the University of Munich after the war.

In 1950 she emigrated to San Francisco, where she met her future husband, the late Harold J. Freemon, and they settled in Tiburon. Mr. Freemon had been a lieutenant in a U.S. Army artillery unit, which occupied Munich at the end of the war. They were amused to discover that they had both attended the same opera in a bombed-out opera house on the same night in 1945, although they did not meet until her arrival in the United States.

Mrs. Freemon was a very fine oil painter and she produced a great many paintings over the course of her life. She was also very active in Estonian-American groups and was much relieved when the Soviet Union fell and Estonia once again became a free and independent nation.

Mrs. Freemon is survived by a daughter, Lisa Lowell of Belvedere, and a son, Lawrence Freemon of Mill Valley, and four grandchildren.