Volunteer Spotlight: Edie Shlian
Edie Shlian has been volunteering in the genealogy department at the JMM since summer 2013. She was interested in researching her own family history and once she learned that we no longer had staff on hand to assist with her pursuit, she determined it was something she could help others with. She is a member of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Maryland and is hoping to bring some co-members in as volunteers as well. In her position, she takes requests from people who are interested in finding out more information about their families – the history of their family in Baltimore. She was surprised that people think we would know everything about family histories, when basically we cover Baltimore Jewish history records.
Before she began volunteering, she was a registered nurse. She began in medical-surgical nursing then switched to cardiology. She worked as a critical care nurse at Union Memorial Hospital, in the cardiac catheterization lab at Sinai Hospital, and in cardiac research at St. Joseph’s Hospital. She became interested in nursing as a result of her father passing away at a young age, due to heart disease. Edie is the mother of three children and grandmother of six. Her youngest daughter and two of her grandchildren live in Seattle, her other daughter, son and grandchildren live in the Baltimore area. She loves to travel, some of her favorite destinations have been Israel, Greece, the Caribbean Islands and across the United States. She’s now at a point where she enjoys returning to a destination, rent an apartment, and live amongst the locals. She has plans in the next year to do this in Florence and Venice.
She sees helping preserve family history as an important mission and looks forward to continuing to do so while at the JMM.
A blog post by Volunteer Coordinator Ilene Cohen. The first Monday of every month she will be highlighting one of our fantastic JMM volunteers. If you are interested in volunteering with the JMM, drop her an email at icohen@jewishmuseummd.org or call 410-732-6402 x217! You can also get more information about volunteering at the Museum here.