Lidia Manson Kuhn, a vibrant woman who had lived in Pacific Palisades since 1952, died in her sleep early March 20. She was 90. Lidia was an accomplished, independent and lively woman: a physicist and engineer, she spoke four languages, spent vacations in the mountains skiing or backpacking, earned a Ph.D. in physics, and raised four children. She had a complex life, in which she overcame a number of griefs and challenges with intelligence, dignity and generosity toward others. Lidia and her brother Numa were born in 1915 and 1914, respectively, in Odessa, Russia, to Piotr and Marie Manson. Although the Mansons were Leninist-Socialists, as members of the Russian-Jewish intelligentsia their lives became difficult during the Stalinist era. They escaped Russia in 1925 when Lidia was 10. After four years in a progressive boarding school in Germany, Lidia joined her parents in Paris, where she completed her university studies. The advent of the Nazis forced a series of moves that ultimately led Lidia to chaperone a large group of Jewish war orphans on a boat to the United States. Lidia’s parents were killed before she could arrange their immigration to the States. On her own in a new country, Lidia became the first woman at Penn State to earn a master’s degree in engineering. In 1946, she met and married John Kuhn, and in 1950 they moved from Buffalo, New York, to Los Angeles, where they raised their four children, all of whom graduated from Palisades High: Marie in 1964, Irene in 1966, Charles in 1970 and Peter in 1971. In her career as a heat-transfer specialist, Lidia worked on the Apollo missions, on rocket engine and fin design, as well as on a number of energy-related projects. Lidia lost her husband, her brother, several close friends, and finally her oldest daughter, Marie, to cancer. These were heavy griefs that Lidia met with strength. In retirement, Lidia taught reading and gardening to inner-city children, attended French and Russian literature courses, volunteered as a docent at the L.A. Museum of Space and Technology, skied and hiked well into her 70s, rarely missed her yoga classes or theater dates with friends, gardened at home, and relished the lives of her six grandchildren: Jonathan, Tyler, Maddy, Max, Rylie, and Riley. Until near the end of her life, one could always count on having an interesting and lively conversation with Lidia. “We are grateful for our mother’s love and care, for her strength and joy in life,” said her surviving children Irene, Charles and Peter Kuhn, who all live in the San Francisco Bay area. Donations in Lidia’s memory would be welcomed by Doctors Without Borders (Medicins sans Fronti’res).
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