Denise Muller

Denise Muller, age 90, died on September 25, 2024, in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Denise was born in Brussels, Belgium, on May 17, 1934. Preceding her in death were her father, Maurice Impens; mother, Irène Janssens; and her beloved younger brother, Jacques Impens, Assistant Professor in Engineering and Economics at the University of Louvain, Belgium, who died prematurely in a sailboat accident. Surviving Jacques are his wife, Françoise, and their daughter Anne-Geneviève, who with her husband Georges Debroux has three sons, Patrick, Cyril, and Aymeric.

 Multilingual, Denise was employed by various companies in Brussels and ended her career there with a multinational company, Bowater Scott Continental, in 1963 to move with her future husband, Thomas Guback, to the United States. She married him in 1964 in San Francisco, and they then lived together in Urbana, Illinois, for many years, where he was a professor of Communications Research at the University of Illinois. Their daughter, Claire Guback, survives her and lives in Madison, Wisconsin. She has two children: Gavin (Eaindra) Huismann and Emma Huismann.

 In the United States, Denise had another career as a member of the American Translators Association, translating for various companies and at the University of Illinois. She started a new Business French Program at that university, holding the position of Teaching Associate, and had a book published in 1984 by Holt, Rinehart & Winston in New York that was used for teaching specialized French by many US universities. After a divorce in 1982, Denise remarried in 1990 to David Muller, a professor in Mathematics at the University of Illinois, and lived with him in both Urbana, Illinois, and later Las Cruces, New Mexico, where he died in 2008.

Denise joined the French Club in Las Cruces, where she made many friends and added new friends in her neighborhood to that group. Denise’s best memories were of her many travels: the trips she took with her friends in Europe before moving to the United States, and later trips overseas with her daughter Claire, eventually adding her grandchildren to some of those trips, taking them to several Spanish-speaking countries, sharing with them the Spanish language that her grandchildren had learned. Her French culinary skills brought many to her table. She was a wine connoisseur. She loved to entertain and connect people, many of whom share wonderful memories of long lunches and dinners with multi-language conversations around her table.

 Her ashes will be spread in the Organ Mountains, which she loved to look at from her New Mexico desert home that she cherished over the years.