Obituary of Françoise Gregg

Françoise Bouriez Gregg, a former professor of French at Marist College, died on Thursday, January 24, at her home in Poughkeepsie. She was 92 and had been in declining health for several years. Mrs. Gregg was born in Paris in 1920 and spent her youth there and in Normandy. She got her baccalaureate at 16 and a law degree at age 20; during and after the war she worked at the Conservatory of Paris, becoming the personal secretary of renown musician and teacher Nadia Boulanger. In the early '50s she came to the United States on a Fulbright scholarship; her doctoral thesis on the social classes in America received an award from the French Academy of Letters and was published in 1954. She moved to the United States in 1953 after her marriage to Richard Gregg and lived there the rest of her life, returning to France every summer but three between 1955 and 2013. She resumed her studies while living in New York City in the 1960s and got her second Ph.D., in French literature, from Columbia University, in 1968. In 1969, her husband became head of the Russian Department at Vassar, and she got a job teaching French language and literature at Marist, where she taught for 20 years. Upon her retirement in 1990 an award was created there in her honor. She is survived by her son, Jonathan, and his wife, Margaret Lewman, of New York City; her sister, Claire Bouriez, of Versailles, France; and an extended family in France. There will be a ceremony in Normandy later this year. Arrangements are under the supervision of Timothy P. Doyle Funeral Home. To send an online condolence please visit www.doylefuneralhome.com