WWW.FLAGLERLIVE.COM
Palm Coast, Florida
Monday, November 25, 2013
By Gabriel Fouad Haddad and Brunei Darussalam 

Monique Safa Haddad Branon 

Monique, who was a kindergarten teacher by profession, kept a weekly column at the Beirut French-speaking daily L’Orient-Le Jour, was the agent of the English company Galt Toys in Lebanon, hosted weekly radio programs on two successive national stations (Radio Liban then La Voix du Liban), organized annual group trips for youths to the great historical sites of England, France and Italy, and created, wrote and hosted a live TV show entitled Le coin des jeunes (Young People’s Corner) on the French-speaking national channel for 15 years. She was also a reporter and foreign correspondent of the Lebanon daily Le Réveil since its inception in 1977, where she created the weekly profile "Men of Our Times" and "Women of Our Times." 

Two years into the Lebanon war she lost her husband of 18 years, photographer Fouad Haddad, in 1976, and moved to New York after marrying James Francis Branon, desk editor at CBS. (James died in Palm Coast in 2010) 

She then became a regular correspondent and contributor for the Paris-based Figaro Magazine; was the author of an autobiographical novel entitled Le violoniste au couvent de la lune (The Violinist at Moon’s Convent, after her father Anis’s native village in the Chouf district of Mount Lebanon) which was published in Paris, as well as a collection of poems, another one of short stories, a textbook of elementary French for English speakers entitled Vis-à-vis published at McGraw-Hill, a series of radio programs on nutrition for UNICEF, and the French translation of A Christian Critique of the University—a collection of three university lectures by the Lebanese thinker and diplomat Charles Malik, one of the co-drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She also served as a trilingual interpreter at the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York.