Remembering Lyn Bonin: From pre-fascist Berlin to WWII battle to an OCC professorship

She lived an amazing life … all 96 years!

Adelyn “Lyn” Bonin worked during her life as an ambulance driver; a shoemaker; a medical assistant; a nurse; an addressograph operator; a secretary; a comptroller; a switchboard operator; an assistant buyer; a school bus driver; and, finally, an Orange Coast College professor.

“You name it, I’ve done it, “ she told me in a 2006 interview.

Bonin died last month in Laguna Woods.

She joined OCC’s faculty in the fall of 1959 as a German language instructor. That was more than a decade after she’d served on the front lines of North Africa, Italy and Austria, during World War II. As a member of the British military, she faced Field-Marshal Erwin Rommel’s vaunted Afrika Korps.

She was an OCC professor for 24 years, until her retirement in 1983. Lyn’s life was captured in her 1993 autobiography, “Allegiances.”

She was born in pre-fascist Berlin in the summer of 1920, the daughter of Prussian-Jewish landowners. Lyn enjoyed her childhood in the German capital. She had no idea that being Jewish differentiated her in any way from her classmates.

When she was 13, Hitler came to power and the world soon realized that evil had taken over.

She developed a thirst to know more about her Jewish heritage. Lyn convinced her parents to allow her to join a kibbutz in Palestine. That move probably saved her life. In 1936, at age 16, she left Germany for Palestine as part of the Youth Aliyah Movement.

Lyn’s parents remained behind and perished in the Holocaust.

“I’ve never known when or how they died,” she told me. “I only know they didn’t survive the war.”

Lyn left the kibbutz after two years and lived in England. She experienced the Nazi air assault, the Battle of Britain, in 1940. She enlisted in the British army in 1942 and served as an ambulance driver on the front lines in North Africa and Italy.

A member of Gen. Montgomery’s 8th Army, she participated in the second battle of El Alamein — a huge victory for Montgomery over Rommel, who was widely known as the “Desert Fox.” She spent three years on the front lines and won six decorations.

As a field ambulance driver, she could deftly maneuver a “Meat Wagon” through harsh desert conditions and chaotic field circumstances. Lyn later served in Austria as part of the occupation army. She was discharged in 1946.

She lived for a time with an uncle in Chicago, but, without a high school diploma, worked in menial jobs. She moved to Southern California.

Lyn’s salvation came through America’s higher education system.

She enrolled at Riverside City College in 1953 and earned an associate of arts degree at age 35. Two years later she completed a bachelor’s in German at UC Riverside, and garnered an master’s from UCLA.

In 1979, at the age of 58, she completed her doctorate.

Lyn was a teaching assistant at UCLA for two years before joining OCC’s faculty in the fall of ’59. She retired 24 years later as a full professor of German.

During her second year on staff, she had an article published in a national community college journal. Titled “A Language Lab For Teaching English to the Foreign Born,” the topic became her area of specialty.

During her tenure at OCC, she visited Europe every summer and spent considerable time in the nation of her birth, Germany. She recognized the value of forgiveness. She refused to harbor bitterness.

“Years ago,” Lyn said in a 1979 interview with an OCC campus publication, “people used to describe the U.S. as a country whose streets were lined with gold. I believe the gold is still present.

“Only in the United States could an individual like myself, with no high school diploma, succeed in completing a doctorate and teach at a college.”

Adelyn Bonin is well remembered at OCC. She was a great teacher and role model.

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OCC is screening nominees for its Alumni Hall of Fame. The 2017 recipient will be honored May 24 at commencement.

To submit a nomination, contact the Foundation Office at (714) 432-5707.

JIM CARNETT, who lives in Costa Mesa, worked for Orange Coast College for 37 years.