Harriet Lynn, once a fixture in Baltimore’s arts community, died of lung cancer on Oct. 31. The Baltimore native, who moved to California in 2015, was 77.
The daughter of Ruth and Morris Garbis, Lynn was a 1962 graduate of Milford Mill High School. She attended the Boston Conservatory, where she graduated with a bachelor of fine arts degree in dance and a minor in theater.
Lynn’s studies prepared her for a long and successful career working steadily in local and national theatrical productions. In the 1960s, she appeared in national tours of “Hello, Dolly!” starring Ginger Rogers (and later Betty Grable),” “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever” with Howard Keel, and “Funny Girl” with Carmen Natiku.
Lynn also performed across North America and in the Caribbean in theaters, hotels and nightclubs, including New York’s Rainbow Room.
In later years, Lynn earned a master of science in administration degree from the University of Maryland University College (now known as the University of Maryland Global Campus).
In 1994, Lynn founded Baltimore’s Heritage Theatre Artists’ Consortium. According to her online Baker Artists Portfolio, the consortium was a vehicle “to produce and direct theatre and oral history projects, living history programs and theatre arts related workshops and residencies.”
Through the consortium, Lynn provided original theatrical content for such local institutions as Goucher College, Johns Hopkins University, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Walters Art Museum, Port Discovery and the Jewish Museum of Maryland.
For the latter, she produced and directed the JMM’s Leo V. Berger Traveling Trunk program and developed the museum’s living history characters Bessie Bluefeld, Ida Rehr and Saul Bernstein.
Lynn was also a playwright, penning theatrical pieces including the one-woman show, “Ella Shields: The Woman Behind the Man,” in which she starred.
In the Baltimore area and beyond, Lynn directed and conceptualized theater projects for older adults. Her career included a 10-year stint as artistic director of the Howard County Arts Council’s 50+ Players.
Seven years ago, Lynn and her husband, physicist Dr. Ivan Kramer, relocated from Baltimore to Carmel, California. There, Lynn began teaching tai chi to seniors and was a member of the Agricultural History Project Living History Farm Planning Committee.
Following her death, Kramer wrote of his wife of 37 years, “Harriet had more friends who loved her on the face of the Earth than anyone could imagine. She had a loving, caring, empathetic soul that was disarming and irresistible. If you became her friend, she would never let go of you. One of her driving forces in life was to befriend everyone she met; she believed that ‘strangers are friends that I have not met yet!’ Her curiosity and inquisitiveness were extraordinary — they had no boundaries: every subject interested her.
“Everyone who knew and loved her is now faced with the wrenching challenge of trying to live without her.”
Lynn’s cousin, Reisterstown resident Mary Joan Levin, recalled the first time she met her. “My husband, Sidney Levin, took me to meet the family in 1958 and there was 13-year-old bubbly Harriet dancing around,” she said. “She was always moving and thinking of what was next.”
Lynn never cared about material things, said Levin, but treasured her family and friends.
In a Facebook post, Baltimore-born actress Gabi Faye Levin, who was also a cousin of Lynn’s, wrote, “We were both infused with a love of the arts, and even after you left Baltimore for California we stayed in touch through phone and Zoom and Facebook. … Harriet, your passing is a shock to us all, you left a wonderful mark on this world and will be remembered always.”
Lynn is survived by her husband; her brothers, Gerald Garbis (Eileen) and Stuart Garbis (Ruth); her sister, Carla Turner; her sister-in-law, Jane Johnson; and cousins Mary Joan Levin, Anne Garbis and John Byner, Arlene and Eli Fleisher, Robbie and Marilyn Meyerson, Joyce Solomon, Judge Marvin and Nancy Garbis, Lorna and Brad Sotoloff, Larry Meyerson, Jerry and Carole Seaman, Hannah and Bob Gomer, and many others.
Lynn was predeceased by her parents, her brother-in-law, Peter Turner, and her cousins, Sidney P. Levin and Steve Solomon.
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