Priscilla Kritz
She was one of two super secretaries in the Rio Ford Foundation office when I was a part-time consultant moonlighting to earn a few extra cruzeiros to pay for my cachaça. Priscilla was a stately middle-aged lady who was the widow of a successful immigrant German engineer.
P. was a formidable coworker. Fluent in Portuguese, English and German, she produced flawless copy whenever I fed anything to her IBM. Any dictation also came out perfect.
I once asked her where she had acquired her accent-less American. She told me that before she worked for Ford she had spent some years translating audio for Hollywood films. If she could understand John Wayne and Ginger Rogers, she could certainly understand my Midwestern accent.
Priscilla was also a fabulous social secretary. I often had to make appointments in Rio and elsewhere in Brazil. As anyone living in a foreign country knows, trying to operate over the phone can be a nightmare. Furthermore, when I lived in Rio the phones never worked when it rained, which was often.
Priscilla would make all my phone appointments and draft the itinerary to the intended spot. She always knew the right tone of voice to use with the voice on the other end, however difficult.
Priscilla was my secret weapon.
Bless her!
Further Readings
Miceli, Sergio. A Fundação Ford no Brasil. São Paulo, SP: FAPESP, Editora Sumaré, 1993.
Patai, Daphne. Brazilian Women Speak: Contemporary Life Stories. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1988.