obits

Hopeton Kimball passed away peacefully on Sunday, Sept. 27, in Lincoln, surrounded by family. Born in New York City, she led a well-rounded life there and in Millbrook, N.Y., and in later years in Lincoln.

Her interests were many and varied. She was prominent in the Millbrook Hunt serving as joint and honorary master there, and active in the Masters of Foxhounds Association and fox hunting world generally for over seventy years. She owned numerous beloved hunters who carried her swiftly and safely over the countryside for decades. She also loved and excelled in carriage driving, especially her pair of Hackney ponies. She competed in combined driving shows throughout the Northeast and treasured friends she made along the way. She was active in the American Driving Society and after retiring from competition, she enjoyed being a judge.

Hopeton was a proud graduate of the Chapin School and Bryn Mawr College where she majored in English, and studied French, music and art history. She was an avid reader and traveled widely especially in England, Ireland and Scotland. At age 23, she accompanied Dame Flora McLeod, Chief of Clan McLeod, on a six-month diplomatic tour around the world and spent time at Dunvegan Castle on the Isle of Skye. She cherished countless trips to Italy with her family when her in-laws were stationed at the American Academy in Rome in the 1960s.

In New York City, she served for years as a tour guide at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, leading groups of children from all walks of life, including school groups from some of the city’s most underprivileged neighborhoods, on highlights tours that introduced them to the wonders of Egypt and Ancient Greece.

A superb cook, Hopeton was an early devotee of Julia Child and Mastering the Art of French Cooking. She prepared daily meals with much enthusiasm for planning menus and perfecting recipes. With her late husband, Dick, she enjoyed outdoor pursuits including tending to their beloved property on Fraleigh Hill, visiting Leadbetter Island Maine, nordic and alpine skiing, playing tennis, gardening, horse and corgi adventures, and attending Millbrook gatherings.

In recent years, Hopeton delighted in spending time with her family and grandchildren. A life exceedingly well lived, she will be remembered for her elegant sense of style, keen eye for detail, intellect, warm hospitality, and twinkle in her eye.

She is predeceased by her husband, Richard A. Kimball Jr.; her parents Deborah and Yale Kneeland Jr.; and her siblings Deborah, Yale, and TA. She is survived by her daughter, Sylvia Kimball Perry of Lincoln; her sons, George Kimball of Lexington and Sam Kimball of New York City; and seven grandchildren: Sam, Ben, Billy, Kate, Josephine, Sammy, Simon, and Ginger.

A memorial service will be held at St. Peter’s Church, Lithgow (696 Deep Hollow Rd, Millbrook, N.Y.) on Nov. 20 at 11:00am. In lieu of flowers and to honor her deep love for Millbrook and Dutchess County, donations in her memory may be made to the Dutchess Land Conservancy, P.O. Box 138, Millbrook, N.Y. 12545. Arrangements are under the care of Dee Funeral Home, which provided this obituary. To share a memory or a condolence on Hopeton’s tribute page, click here.

(Editor’s note: a longer version of this obituary appears on the website of the Dee Funeral Home, which is handling arrangements.)

Katharine “Kit” Eaton Dreier, a mother of four and a land-conservation advocate who grew up in Lincoln and returned to the town in her 80s, has died at 96. She passed away peacefully on Sept. 28, 2026, at home in the Commons in Lincoln, her youngest daughter holding her hand.

Kit sang in the retirement center’s chorus, grew vegetables and painted watercolors into her 90s. In earlier years she played tennis and the cello, hosted dinner parties and scribbled effusive letters to friends and relatives worldwide.

She loved raising children, until they grew into teenagers and became perplexing. The kids generally came back around to her in their 20s. Kit endured painful losses and challenges, losing her first husband to a mountaineering accident and a daughter to cancer. But she continued to look out for the wider world, becoming an activist on climate change, an issue that deeply concerned her. Throughout, Kit maintained her resilience, graciousness, curiosity and sense of humor and joy.

Born in Cambridge in 1930, Kit was the third child of Gertrude Sturgis Eaton and Richard Jefferson Eaton. Their first-born son, Richard, died in infancy. Kit was close to her older brother, Toby, and younger brother, Jeff.  At age 10, Kit and her family moved from Cambridge to a house atop Bedford Hill in Lincoln with an attached barn and a tennis court on 2½ acres of apple trees and pasture. 

In 1943, Kit’s father, Dick, a World War I veteran, re-enlisted in the Army, ultimately serving as military governor of Leipzig during the Allied occupation. At home amid wartime rationing, Kit’s mother Gertrude closed the Lincoln house temporarily and moved with the three children to Cambridge to live with her sister, Kit’s namesake, Katharine (Kay) Sturgis.

Kit attended Shady Hill School, switching to Lincoln public schools after her father returned from the war. She attended high school at Concord Academy, commuting in a Model A Ford with a rumble seat. Kit attended Smith College, spending junior year abroad in Geneva and graduating in 1952 with a BA in political science. She returned to Shady Hill School to complete its apprentice-teaching program, then taught in England.

In 1956, Kit married Arthur Hinton Read, a Scottish mathematician and mountaineer who had spent World War II decoding Nazi military messages in a top-secret project outside London. Emerging from St. Anne’s in-the-Fields Episcopal Church in Lincoln, bride and groom ducked beneath an archway of ice axes held aloft by cheering members of the wedding party.

Kit and Arthur lived in St. Andrews, Scotland, where he taught at the university. Their son Rich was born in 1957. Daughter Kate was born two years later. But tragedy struck in 1961. Arthur, who had scaled peaks in Canada, Europe and Pakistan, was killed by an avalanche while climbing in the Scottish Highlands. 

The close-knit St. Andrews community rallied in support. Although Kit loved Arthur’s parents, she longed for the support of her family and community in the States, where jobs were more plentiful. Kit settled in Cambridge with the children, enrolling them in Shady Hill School. She taught there and at Buckingham school.

In 1965, Kit met Ted Dreier Jr., a psychiatrist and fellow cellist. While courting, they often drove separately, unable to fit both cellos into one car. The couple married in January 1967. Their daughter Lisa was born that October. Another daughter, Ruth, was born in 1969.

Kit and a friend, Ariadne Forbes, opened Friends Gallery, a Cambridge clothing and crafts boutique. Kit went on to work at the Cambridge Art Association, piloting her Volkswagen bus into congested downtown Boston to install large modern paintings in lobbies of law firms and banks.

In 1975, Kit and Ted built a rustic house based on a neighboring barn on Martha’s Vineyard. In all, she spent more than 50 summers on the island. Once their children were raised, the couple moved in 1994 from Cambridge to Belmont, where Ted worked at McLean Hospital and Kit was elected to Town Meeting.

Kit helped start two conservation organizations, the Belmont Land Trust and the Judy Record Conservation Fund. She was active in the Thursday Club, a women’s read-aloud book group founded in 1890.

In 2018, Kit and Ted returned to Lincoln, moving into The Commons. With her first cousin Anne Watt, a fellow resident, Kit co-founded the Commons Green Initiative, addressing climate change.  

Ted died at 89 in 2019. The couple’s daughter Elizabeth (Lisa) Low Dreier died of breast cancer in 2024. Kit’s survivors include her son, Richard Read and his wife, Brenda, of Seattle; two daughters, Katharine (Kate) Read Villars and her husband Thom, of Norwich, Vermont, and Ruth Antoinette Dreier, of Sebastopol, Calif.; a granddaughter, Nehalem Kunkle-Read, of Seattle; a brother, Jefferson Taft Eaton, of Lincoln; two sisters-in-law, Barbara Beate Dreier, of Livingston Manor, New York, and Dorly Eaton, of Salzburg, Austria; and two nieces, Dorita Eaton, of Salzburg, and Isabelle Black and her husband, Scott, of Brookline; and a grand-niece, Julia Black, of Brookline.

A memorial gathering will be held at 2:00pm on Wednesday, Dec. 9 at the First Parish in Lincoln. Arrangements are under the care of Dee Funeral Home & Cremation Service of Concord. Donations in Kit’s memory may be made to the Lincoln Land Conservation Trust.

George Chapman Hibben, a.k.a. “Hib,” born in Chicago on October 17, 1931 and a 58-year resident of Lincoln, passed away on September 23, 2026, in Bedford, four weeks shy of his 95th birthday.

George graduated from the Harvard School for Boys on Chicago’s south side and, at 16, ventured eastward for the first time, by train to New Hampshire with his older brother Ed, where they both entered Dartmouth College. George majored in art/landscape architecture; he was a Rufus Choate Scholar and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He was a member of Kappa Sigma fraternity, Casque and Gauntlet Senior Society, Green Key, the Undergraduate Council, the Athletic Council, and Palaeopitus, and was the secretary of the senior class and manager of the Football Team.

“Hib” attended every quinquennial Class of 1952 reunion including serving as chairman of his 15th and as class president commencing in 2022 at his 70th. George was a class agent and he himself donated to his alma mater every year for seven decades, knowing he helped make a Dartmouth education possible for many others.

George attended Harvard Business School in 1953 and 1956 and earned his M.B.A. in May 1957. During the three intervening Korean War years, he attended officer school and served in the U.S. Navy Supply Corps, assigned conveniently to the Boston Naval Shipyard. In 1957 he married Julia Whitman Kimball in Chatham, a 1957 Smith College graduate, and joined the Polaroid Corporation in Waltham. After 28 years in various manufacturing, procurement, and product development positions (the Swinger, SX-70, Polavision instant movies), he retired in 1985.

Over the course of 25 years of retirement, George volunteered at Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum working closely with the horticulture staff. Concurrently, he was a member of the Massachusetts chapter of the Rhododendron Society, and he interbred and named a new hybrid rhododendrons that he added to his renowned world-class 200-variety rhododendron garden in Lincoln.

George served on multiple town administrative and conservation bodies, including as elected town treasurer. Between dozens of hiking trips with Julie across the globe, he spent countless hours researching his early American pioneer Hibben family and its descendants, about whom he published several genealogical articles and an award-winning 2003 book chronicling 13 generations of Hibbens in America. At age 85, it proved too much for him to care for his expansive gardens, orchards, and arbors, and to snowblow the 200-yard driveway, so George and Julie eagerly moved to Carleton-Willard Village in Bedford.

George and Julie raised three children who all attended Dartmouth and, with Julie, survive him: Ted (Gretchen), Heidi Russell (Daniel) and Eliza Royal (Allan). He leaves eight grandchildren: Henry Russell (Ashley Woodworth), Claire Russell (fiancé Trevor Myrick); Sophia (fiancé Nathaniel Dooley), Charles and Timothy Hibben; Margaret, Samuel and Julia Royal; great-grandson River Russell; and Lincoln in-laws John and Joan Kimball. George is predeceased by his brother, Edward Hibben.

Cremains will be interred in the Hibben family lot in Sugar Grove Cemetery in Wilmington, Ohio. Gifts in his memory can be made to the Garden in the Woods online at www.nativeplanttrust.org. Arrangements have been entrusted to Dee Funeral Home & Cremation Service of Concord. For George’s online tribute page, click here.

Noelle Caskey was born in a Boston blizzard on December 26, 1947 to parents Walter and Anna Caskey. She died on August 5, 2026 following a two-week hospitalization for pneumonia. She spent her youth in Needham and Lincoln before moving in 1970 to the Berkeley, Calif., area where she remained. She graduated from Concord Academy, Radcliffe, and the University of California, Berkeley (Ph.D). She was married to Richard Freudenheim for 20 years.

Noelle taught herself to read long before anyone tried to teach her, and books never let go of her after that — her house and her Kindle were both loaded to the gills. Just as attentive a reader of people as of books, she was known for her penetrating yet compassionate insights into those around her. That gift found its outlet in educational consulting, where she helped teachers and schools work through classroom problems, first as an independent consultant and later as part of the WestEd team, where she finished her career in 2017.

This was only one aspect of her colorful life. Noelle had a strong silly streak and relished stupid jokes as well as other uses of words. As a writer she had a gardening column when she wasn’t writing poems, having started out as the editor of her high school literary magazine. She had an abiding interest in Carl Jung and studied his ideas for decades.

After recovering from polio at age 4 she became a dancer. She started with ballet as a youngster and then hit the floor again as a competitive ballroom dancer in her 50s. This led her to the tango. Dancing and teaching tango, she formed deep bonds with teachers and students in the tango world and she traveled to Buenos Aires in pursuit of wider experience.

Feldenkrais was her other passion. Noelle did Feldenkrais activities for many years before becoming a certified practitioner herself in 2020. It gave her pleasure to share her expertise with others and she enjoyed important friendships with her “Feldenfriends.”

Noelle will be sorely missed by her friends and her Caskey survivors including siblings Alexander (Carmen Lozano), Jennifer, Nicholas (Susan Nakamura), nephew Sasha (Marina), niece Vanessa and great nieces Talia and Isabela. She is also survived by her aunt Susan Strong, and uncles Christopher Morss and Richard Clancey, and various cousins.

A memorial gathering will be held at 11:00am Saturday, Sept. 26 at the Hillside Club at 2286 Cedar St., Berkeley, Calif., 94709. In lieu of flowers, please consider a gift to the Women’s Cancer Resource Center of Berkeley Those unable to attend in person may request livestream information at rememberingnoelle2026@gmail.com.

Thomas Everett Black, a Harvard graduate, Navy veteran, loving husband of 43 years, father of three and grandfather of eight, died on August 25, 2026 after a battle with cancer.

Born in Boston in 1943, he grew up in Lincoln. He was the middle child of Everett and Anne Black. After attending the Fenn School and Phillips Exeter Academy, he graduated from Harvard University in 1966. He served for many years as class secretary and took great pride in writing the monthly newsletter for his class until the end of his life. He was very active in planning his class reunions and was also a member of the Happy Committee for many years, serving as an usher at Harvard’s Commencement, an annual event that he always looked forward to.

He served in the U.S. Navy from 1968-1972 as chief engineer of the U.S.S. Sedgwick County, LST 1123, in Vietnam. Upon leaving the Navy, he began his career in business development, a career in which he worked with banks, developers, entrepreneurs, and small businesses.

Tom grew up sailing, which became a lifelong passion. He was an avid runner and was a member of the Concord Runners for 40 years. A talented model ship builder, he crafted intricate models from scratch in his workshop, and often donated these models to various organizations and friends. Additionally, Tom was a loyal member of his book club of 30 years, reading each book cover to cover. A man of routine, he read three newspapers in the morning, enjoyed a nap each afternoon, and his evening martini was straight up with olives.

He was an active member of every community in which he lived, serving on the Finance Committees of both Lincoln and Maynard. He was treasurer on the boards of C4RJ, a restorative justice nonprofit, and Epiphany School in the critical early days of the school’s history.

Tom was baptized at St. Anne’s in-the-Fields in Lincoln and remained a dedicated parishioner for the rest of his life. He was an active member of the Wednesday morning men’s group, a one-time treasurer, a member of the Altar Guild, a lay Eucharistic minister, lector, and crucifer.

Above all, Tom loved his family. He is survived by his beloved wife of 43 years, Nancy Ellis Black; his three children, Heather Davenport, Andrew Black and Sophie Dingle; two sons-in-law, Christian Davenport and Ryan Dingle; a daughter-in-law, Jessica Black; and eight grandchildren; as well as his brother, Stanly Black and partner Beth Humstone. He was predeceased by his sister, Pamela Hay. He also leaves behind a large extended family and many friends.

A memorial service will be held on Saturday, Oct.17, 2026, at 11:00am at St. Anne’s in-the-Fields Church in Lincoln. In lieu of flowers, gifts in Tom’s name may be made to Communities for Restorative Justice, PO Box 961074, Boston, MA 02196 or to St. Anne’s. Arrangements are under the care of Concord Funeral Home, which provided this obituary.

Charles “Lem” Kusik, a devoted husband and father, accomplished engineer, lifelong adventurer, and endlessly curious student of the world, died on August 14, 2026, at the age of 92.

Lem was born in New York City on April 24, 1934, and spent his early years in New York, Estonia, and Richmond, Mass. His childhood in the Berkshires helped foster a lifelong love of the outdoors. He joined the Boy Scouts at age 12 and quickly embraced camping, hiking, orienteering, and wilderness skills, ultimately earning the rank of Eagle Scout shortly before his 15th birthday. Scouting also sparked interests that stayed with him throughout his life, including mineralogy, birding, skiing, and a seemingly inexhaustible appetite for adventure.

Lem possessed an extraordinary intellect and an equally strong desire to put it to use. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earning a bachelor of science in chemical engineering in 1956 and then a master of science in nuclear engineering in 1959. He continued his education at New York University, where he pursued graduate studies in engineering and earned his doctor of science in engineering in 1961.

While pursuing his education, Lem also served his country. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Army Reserve in 1956. During the Berlin Crisis in 1961, he was called to active duty, and his service was subsequently extended during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He completed his military service as a first lieutenant in 1963. While in the Army, Lem also joined a flying club and learned to pilot airplanes — another pursuit that suited both his curiosity and his adventurous spirit.

Lem went on to build a distinguished career as an engineering and management consultant. In 1964, he joined Arthur D. Little in Cambridge, Mass, where he would spend nearly four decades. His work took him around the world and involved projects for private industry as well as major governmental and international organizations, including the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. His consulting work spanned industries including steel, chemicals, mining, energy, and manufacturing.

For Lem, however, work was never confined to an office. His career gave him the opportunity to pursue one of his greatest passions: seeing and understanding the world. Over the course of his life, he traveled to more than 70 countries across nearly every continent. Whether an assignment brought him to Botswana, Morocco, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Peru, Australia, Japan, Russia, Nepal, or elsewhere, Lem rarely passed up an opportunity to stay a little longer, explore somewhere nearby, meet people, or discover something new.

Adventure was a defining theme of Lem’s life. He hiked mountains, skied throughout the United States and abroad, flew airplanes, and continued seeking new experiences well into later life. His adventures occasionally placed him in situations that, in retrospect, even Lem admitted were perhaps more daring than sensible. He survived close calls on mountains, ski slopes, and in the cockpit, and later recounted them with characteristic humor and an appreciation for just how fortunate he had been. Reflecting on some of those experiences, Lem once jokingly wondered that if a cat had nine lives, how many he might have left.

Behind those accomplishments and adventures was a man with an abiding curiosity about the world around him. He loved learning, traveling, nature, birds, minerals, skiing, and the outdoors. He maintained a life list of more than 200 species of birds, kept track of the countries he had visited, and accumulated a lifetime of stories along the way. As Lem himself once wrote, “My whole life has been an adventure.”

Among the most important chapters of that adventure was the family he built.

Lem married Wendy Palu in 1984. Together, they eventually made the deeply considered decision to become parents through adoption. Lem believed strongly in the importance of opportunity. It had shaped his own life through education, hard work, travel, and the freedom to pursue his many interests, and he wanted to give children the same chance to discover who they could become.

In 1999, Lem and Wendy adopted Lida and Aleksander, a sister and brother from Russia. With their arrival, Lem began an entirely new adventure: fatherhood.

He brought to being a father many of the qualities that characterized the rest of his life. He believed in education, independence, curiosity, perseverance, and experiencing the world firsthand. He wanted his children to have opportunities, to think for themselves, and to pursue lives and ambitions of their own choosing. Most importantly, he wanted them to grow up knowing they had a family that loved them and believed in what they could become.

For a man who traveled to more than 70 countries and spent a lifetime seeking out new places and experiences, some of Lem’s most meaningful years were ultimately centered on home and family. Becoming a husband and father was not separate from his life of adventure and discovery; it became one of its most important parts.

Lem leaves behind far more than a remarkable list of professional achievements, degrees earned, countries visited, mountains climbed, or adventures survived. He leaves the example of a life lived with tremendous curiosity, determination, courage, independence, and an eagerness to see what might be around the next corner.

From his early days in New York, Estonia, and the Berkshires, to the classrooms of MIT and NYU, from military service during pivotal moments in American history, to an engineering career that carried him around the globe, and from the many adventures he collected along the way to the family he and Wendy created together, Lem packed an extraordinary amount of living into his 92 years.

He will be deeply missed and lovingly remembered by his wife, Wendy; his children, Lida and Aleksander; and the family, friends, colleagues, and countless others whose lives intersected with his during a long life spent exploring, learning, and embracing the world around him.

Eoin William Trevelyan, age 87, died in Concord on August 5, 2026. A long-time resident of Lincoln, he was predeceased by his devoted wife, J. Ann Devitt Trevelyan, and is survived by his children, Fiona S. Trevelyan and Stuart E.D. Trevelyan and their families, as well as his sister, Anna Trevelyan Stoker and her family.

Born in Yorkshire, England, on July 23, 1939, to Margaret Mary Edith Gardiner Montgomery Trevelyan and Percy Trevelyan, Eoin was educated at St. Peter’s School (York) and received his undergraduate degree from the University of Leeds before joining Ford Motor Co.(U.K.). He and his new bride then crossed the Atlantic so both could attend graduate school at Harvard University; he received his MBA in 1967 and his doctorate in 1972 from the Harvard School of Business. Eoin then joined the faculty of Harvard Business School before moving to the Harvard School of Public Health, where he remained for the rest of his career. 

Having served as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at Spelman College in Atlanta between his MBA and doctoral programs, Eoin maintained a close affiliation with the college, including serving as a trustee for many years. He and his wife were also active members of Trinity Copley Square.

A private service will be held at a later date. Donations may be made in Eoin’s honor to Trinity Boston Connects, 206 Clarendon St., Boston MA 02115. Arrangements are under the care of Concord Funeral Home, which provided this obituary.