Nina Voorhees Brought `Magic' To Her Finishing-School Students

Nina Voorhees, whose "finishing schools" brought culture and manners to Seattle and Tri-Cities children, recently was asked why she'd chosen a theater-dance career.

She turned a kindly gaze on the interviewer and said, "Why, my dear! Because I had talent."

Grit, too, she might have added. Her commitment to her art not only estranged her from her family but also cost her hard years as a seamstress in a prison camp after the Nazis detained her dance troupe in Berlin in 1939.

"Nina - she gave her name a Russian pronunciation (of Nin-ya) - Nina was a grand lady with a lot of courage and always made everyone around her feel good," said her niece Susan Christenson of Bainbridge Island.

"I owe her so much for my children," said her daughter-in-law, Elsie Jane Sayles of Seattle. "She brought magic into their lives."

Mrs. Voorhees, of Bainbridge Island, died Monday, Aug. 12, of Alzheimer's disease. She was 88.

Born in Nova Scotia, Mrs. Voorhees as a girl was sent to live with an aunt in Paris and to attend private schools in Europe after her father died and her mother became ill. Later, Mrs. Voorhees was shunned by her family for choosing a stage career - then thought improper for a woman.

She studied painting and sculpture, danced with several companies, even performed during the 1928-29 season on Broadway in the musical, "Rose Marie."

While she was in Germany she was deemed an "enemy national" by the Nazis and spent two years in a camp. But she escaped, as she later told her family, with the aid of a German opera singer. Mrs. Voorhees then worked for placement of children orphaned by the war and earned commendations from the United Nations and then-Gen. Dwight Eisenhower.

She met her future husband, Major Mel Voorhees, while working as an interpreter with the Allied forces in France and Germany. The couple came to the United States in 1947 and to Seattle in 1950.

Mrs. Voorhees promptly opened a dance-and-finishing school, helped to stage pageants around town, took students to important restaurants, and was active in Seattle Symphony.

In the Tri-Cities, she ran a dance-and-finishing school from about 1956 to 1993, promoted civic beautification and showed Afghan hounds. She taught diction and posture, art appreciation and French.

She often kept up with former students, corresponding with many.

"She always was interested in people," said her niece. "She would say, `Stand back and let me look at you. Don't you look beautiful!' She was our family's Auntie Mame."

Other survivors include her stepdaughter, Leslie Tutwiler, Lake Bluff, Ill.; her nieces, Jane Sayles, Seattle, and Sarah Barry,

Issaquah; and four step-grandchildren. Her husband died in 1977; her stepson, Bob Voorhees, died in 1981. The family plans no services.