A Profile of Fanny Krieger
Founder of the Golden West Women Flyfishers
and the International Women's Fly Fishing Festival

by Lyla Foggia

It's hard to imagine how many more years might have passed before fly fishing women finally got together, if Fanny Krieger hadn't gotten the inspiration for a Festival back in early 1995 - and spent well over a year marshalling the collective energy necessary to pull it off. The invitation issued in mid-1996 read simply: "It's time for us to get acquainted and learn from each other. This will be an exciting opportunity to expand our potential, tackle issues, and explore new possibilities. Think about the impact we could have, acting together for common goals. Think about the fun...."

The weekend was certainly that and more - just as the germ of an idea for a women-only club in the Bay Area quickly grew into a giant oak that became the Golden West Women Flyfishers - both the result of her uncanny vision, enduring optimism, and unwavering determination in whatever she has tackled in life. If nothing else had come out of the Festival, it finally threw the spotlight on Fanny, who for too long has remained in the shadow of her famous husband, Mel - a dynamic personality who rightfully has become one of the sport's most respected casting gurus.

To meet this petite, soft-spoken woman in her later 60s, no one would guess that Fanny Krieger has been fly fishing for over two decades. Or that she has been working behind the scenes of the fly fishing industry for over thirty years. Nor, more importantly, that she has survived one of the greatest tragedies of all: the Holocaust. Indeed, the story of Fanny's heart-wrenching childhood during and after the war was the basis for the award-winning book, A Pocket Full of Seeds, written by a friend, Marilyn Sachs, for young people in their pre-teens.

The daughter of a Polish father and Romanian mother, she spent most of her childhood living in the small French town of Aix-les-Bains, near the Swiss border - where they were one of only three Jewish families in residence at the time. Prior to the war, Fanny and her younger sister, Helene, rarely saw their parents, who were on the road most of the time, selling men's and women's sweaters at surrounding town markets.

"It was a very hard working life, and my sister and I were left to the care of families who took children in to supplement their income. We only saw our parents for a couple of hours once a week," she recounted. When the war broke out, her parents returned home and the family was reunited.

"It was a wonderful time for us. Many Jewish families from Paris sought refuge in our town. First, we had the Italian occupation, [but] we hardly knew they were there; the Italian soldiers were very friendly. Then in early 1943, the Germans took over and for a while maintained a very low profile."

It was not to last. "One night (November 14 of that year), the first of many, they came and took my family away. My sister was seven years old then and I was 13. A cousin of my mother's had come to visit and he was taken in my place. I spent the rest of the war hiding out in the boarding school in Aix. And I survived. My parents and sister never came back."

In 1947, at the age of 17, Fanny moved to New York, a total stranger living in a country where she didn't even know the language. "I grew up fast while I lived in New York, but I was not happy," she says of the five years spent there, while working for Air France and then Belgium Airlines.

Out of a desire to meet a great aunt and uncle, she relocated to Shreveport, Louisiana. "They were such sweet people, but they were in their late 80s, and I was 22." A year later, she moved on to Houston with another French girl she'd met in Louisiana. And that's where Fanny met her future husband, Mel, on a blind date. Already steeped in fishing, he wanted to "get seriously connected to fly fishing," so they later moved to San Francisco, then a mecca for the sport.

Soon after settling in, she set up a visa business out of their house, when she couldn't find anyone to watch her kids so that she could take an outside job. Mel came aboard to sell the concept to travel agents, and in 1995 they celebrated 30 years in the business. The secret to its success, Fanny explains, is that they are able to offer a one-stop service that makes it possible for travelers to secure the necessary visas required to enter most foreign countries, without having to wade through the complex regulations and tedious delays of dealing directly with individual embassies.

In 1968, the Kriegers also set up a fly fishing travel business, called Club Pacific, and at some point, created the Mel Krieger Fly Fishing Schools, for which Mel travels the country. Even with three businesses to run, she still manages to find the time to travel extensively, including as a co-host on various fly fishing destination trips for which they take anglers to places like the Bahamas and New Zealand.

Of her life today, Fanny, said: "Our daughter, Sharon, and our son, Jan, his wife Karen, and our darling 3-year-old grandson, Kale - along with Mel - are now my only immediate family, and they are keenly sympathetic of my survival background.

"I still have the red cover photo album that I found in the apartment on the floor after the Germans came. We look at it. All those pictures are so happy. One was taken at the beach in 1939, with the whole family and a picnic basket." Then she quoted a passage from A Pocket Full of Seeds: "I can see that picture even when I close my eyes....Soon there will be a day like that when our family packs a huge picnic lunch in a basket and goes off to the beach. I know that there will be a day like that, and, sometimes, in the darkness here, I can feel the sunshine on my face."

We salute Fanny Krieger, who has somehow survived so much pain to bring so much joy to women in fly fishing.