Obituary of Maya Jabbour Grigg

GRIGG - Maya (nee Jabbour), age 69, of Cliffside Park, NJ, after an eight year battle with cancer. She was born in Enfeh, a seaside village in Lebanon. Leaving behind a life as a beauty queen and nursing student, she moved to New York to work as a tour guide with the United Nations in the late 1960s. During that time, she met her husband, Ernest C. Grigg III, a career diplomat. The consummate jet setters, the couple spent the next two decades raising their family in New York, Nigeria, Zaire, Belgium, and Lebanon before settling in Washington DC, where they continued to live after Ernest's death in 1986. At that time, Maya became a certified preschool teacher and worked in local elementary schools until taking an early retirement in 1999. She then moved to the New York metro area to be closer to her family. Known for treating dignitaries like neighbors and vice versa, Maya became legendary around the world for either her cooking, her dance moves, or both. She is survived by a loving family that includes her children, Rheema Pike, Christa Zamel, and Ernest C. Grigg IV, as well as her grandchildren, Tristan and Jasper Pike, Isabella and Lucianna Zamel, and a baby Grigg on the way.