obits

Jane Ward

A memorial service will be held in Lincoln on Sunday, Oct. 2 for longtime Lincoln resident Jane “Jinx” Leichtle Ward who died on July 14. She leaves behind a sister, four children, four daughter/son-in-laws, six grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and many friends.

Jane was born in Waterbury, Conn. on July 30, 1933 to Paul Adrian and Eleanor Blondeck Leichtle. Born at the trough of America’s Great Depression, that economic setting and the Second World War which followed were formative childhood experiences. Waterbury, aka “Brass City,” played a major strategic role in the supplying of war materiel. Looking back she characterized herself as “a child of the war.” During the war, Jane learned at the Salvation Army how to knit, which became a lifelong avocation and passion. In adulthood, her children and numerous friends became beneficiaries of her voluminous production of sweaters. Jane’s childhood home was shared with two sisters: Mary Lou Bay, who died in 2016, and Adrienne Maxwell, who survives her sisters.

Jane attended Waterbury’s Crosby High School, graduating as class valedictorian in 1951. She  balanced her academic pursuits with being a cheerleader for Crosby’s athletics teams, as well as extracurricular activities such as the school German language club. Relatively small and light, Jane enjoyed sharing recollections of being tossed high up in the air during cheerleading routines.

With Crosby behind her, Jane entered Wellesley College as a Wellesley Scholar. Her fondest recollections from her Wellesley years were connected to the camaraderie she shared with her classmates, in particular with her dorm-mates at Munger Hall in the center of the campus. She formed many friendships while living there which endured for the rest of her life. Taking a break from the intense thinking-heavy demands of academics, summers she worked as a waitress at the Asticou Inn in Northeast Harbor, Maine, near Acadia National Park. It was there that she met Thomas Dillingham Ward. They were married the summer between her college junior and senior years. They separated in 1969 and subsequently divorced.

After graduating from Wellesley in 1955, Jane had four children in slightly over five years: Geoffrey, Benjamin, Thomas Jr., and Eliza. After living in Concord and on Beacon Hill during the initial years of her marriage, she moved to Lincoln to stay — excepting short residences in London and the San Francisco Bay area later in life — in the fall of 1959. After returning for good in 1992, she routinely pronounced Lincoln “the best place in the world to live,” appreciative of its beauty and the town having been a terrific place for raising her children. She was also deeply grateful for the role her circle of friends, constituting a notional village, played in supporting her family and career. Observing them in their adulthoods, she was delighted to pronounce her kids, however different from each other, as all having an “SOH” – sense of humor.

Jane started her professional career in 1964 working for the legendary Cambridge research and development company Bolt Beranek and Newman. She moved on from BBN in 1969, in part over philosophical objections to their contribution to the arms race. She held several management consulting positions over the next seven years before landing at Digital Equipment in 1976, where she remained until she retired in 1992. She met her second husband, David Cope, at DEC in 1978. They soon discovered a mutual intense interest in Africa and its wildlife. After an initial game viewing tour to Kenya, they went on to organize and lead 14 tours themselves — to Kenya, Botswanna, Tanzania, and Zambia. Jane considered her trips with David to Africa to be highlights of her life. They also traveled to Europe many times.

Subsequent to her retirement, Jane and David enjoyed pursuing their individual and common interests from their Lincoln home. Hers included knitting (of course), reading, history, and cooking. Their daily rituals routinely involved doing the New York Times crossword puzzle, games of backgammon, and croquet when the weather allowed. They enjoyed entertaining friends and family and the aforementioned traveling. She and David included grandchildren in several of their trips abroad, reveling in exposing that generation to the wider world. Her first grandchild, Tyler, son of Tom Jr. and his wife Andrea Ward, was born in 1984. He was followed by Christina (1985), also of Tom and Andrea; Kathleen (1988) and Martin (1991), children of Ben and his wife Mary Pat Daly; and Izabel (1997) and Alexander (2003), children of Eliza and husband Tim Mar.

A year after David’s death in 2015, Jane moved from her home of 57 years to an apartment near the town commercial center, where she lived independently until her death. She appreciated her modest unit with its southwestern facing windows, allowing her to enjoy sunsets. A significant avenue of fulfillment during these later years was her participation in the Lincoln Council on Aging’s knitting and bridge groups – the former offering a platform for passing on her knowledge of and passion for the craft to younger enthusiasts. Through to her life’s end Jane proclaimed that she was glad to have been born when and where she was, saying that her generation “lived in the best of times.”

A memorial service will be held for Jane on Sunday, Oct. 2 at 2 p.m. in Bemis Hall. Any contributions made in her memory would be appropriately directed to the Lincoln Council on Aging. Click here for her online guestbook. Arrangements are under the care of Dee Funeral Home.

Elinor P. Nichols

By Kathleen Nichols and Katie Creel

Elinor P. Nichols of Lincoln, an indomitable Lincoln walker with a globe-trotting past, died on Sept. 7, 2022. She was born March 11, 1927 in Nagpur, India. Being “from the jungles of central India” was her first story in a lifetime of stories lived and told. It explained the village Hindi she learned from her nanny and the frequency with which she got lost in concrete jungles: “If I had an elephant, I’d be fine,” she would tell the passerby who showed her the way.

While big sister Carol stayed in the bungalow, Elinor and older brother Gale roved narrow paths in search of things different than home. There was the morning the python dropped on them from above. There was the evening the tiger stalked them home and they could not let themselves break into a run, lest they be chased.

Elinor’s boundless compassion was born in the starving India of the 1930s. She fed her chapattis to famished dogs at the railway station. She slept with orphaned baby squirrels. After leaving her parents, Esther Gale and Kenneth Lyon Potee, to board at Kodaikanal International School, a British hill station, she experienced hunger firsthand. Privation rooted her life in gratitude: if you’re alive and not hungry, It’s Good Enough.

At school, when Elinor wasn’t attracting suitors with her sunny disposition, she was rescuing the brown rats that the kitchen cooks caught, strangled, and threw over the wall into the school playground. The rats that survived till morning she wrapped in a pair of underpants so they couldn’t bite, hid them in her dresser, fed them until they recovered, then released them near the kitchen.

Elinor started Oberlin College in the middle of World War II. To her naïve eyes, America was an alien place with alien values: money, bridge, alcohol, movies, and cigarettes. It took twelve weeks for her mother’s comforting letters to answer Elinor’s homesick ones.

Her college majors, sociology and psychology, helped make sense of things, and people. After marrying Roger Nichols, she earned a master’s degree in psychiatric social work (the first class to graduate from that program at the University of Iowa). As her class of three crossed the stage, the dean whispered to her, “You’re the best student we’ve ever had.” Following a year of visiting patients at home, Elinor gave birth to Kathleen and Wendy.

To pay off medical school debts, the family decamped in 1957 to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, a small compound built on rocky, barren hills near the world’s most productive oil well, Dammam #7. Camels instead of elephants, deserts instead of jungles, more admirers of her vim: to Elinor it felt like home. Being cute in a tennis dress was fun. Driving a forehand shot to the far baseline was more fun. Yet when imminent loss dispirited her opponent, Elinor threw the game — invisibly and gently. Winning didn’t mean diddly-squat. Jogging home after three sets in 110℉, tennis shoes squishy wet, she thought she could never be happier. Happiness was also water skiing on the Persian Gulf, jumping the wake — until she wiped out and fell into a salty sea of jellyfish and sea snakes.

In another life, Elinor would have been an archeologist. Clambering between pre-Islamic ruins, she could see camouflaged blonde chert arrowheads where others saw only rocks. She led Girl Scout troops into the desert to scramble up jabals (mountains) and explore riverbeds. Around campfires at night her guitar and sweet voice led the singing. When her son Quaife was born in 1961, she sang him spirituals and folk songs.

Inheriting an Arabian mare posed a challenge. She knew her Indian elephants but it was obvious that horses were too big and frightening to ride so she exercised Sheer by walking her in circles. Her Girl Scouts snickered, “Mrs. Nichols, we’ve been talking and we think you’re too scared to ride Sheer.” “I’m not scared,” she said, “I just need the exercise.” The girls hoisted her ninety-six pounds into the saddle. Soon, she was cantering yellow dunes. Soon, galloping the endless beaches.

Twice the family drove 4,000 miles from London to Arabia, jerry cans of water strapped to the bumpers of a Land Rover, Elinor handing sandwiches to her three children riding outside on the hood and roof. From Istanbul in the west to Sharjah in the east, in souks and harbors, her Hindi opened doors — a gold smuggler in Dubai offered her passage on his sailing dhow — but it was humor, kindness, and warmth that won her a world of friends. Those who shared their addresses received years of airmail postcards, an honor they returned by arriving on her doorstep at nap time — horrifying.

In 1970, Elinor moved to a marsh island in Cohasset Harbor, south of Boston, where she discovered a plethora of animals that needed her. She fed the possums, porcupines, ducks, chipmunks, and squirrels. She fed the coyotes and foxes that eat them. Spying from a mile away her white Toyota heading home, red-tailed hawks circling overhead screeched for their daily chicken wings. On the front lawn, raccoons dined on dog food. When an exhausted mother of five kits leaned against Elinor to rest while her babies ate from Elinor’s cupped hands, the two mothers needed no words.

Amirah, her Newfoundland, roamed the nearby beaches in search of picnics. The phone would ring: “Come get your dog. She just ate our hot dogs.” Elinor would jump into a canoe and paddle across the harbor. Willingly, Amirah would clamber into the bow and ride serenely until a seagull flew by, whereupon she’d capsize the canoe and paddle towards Portugal.

Unable to pay the mortgage on Bailey’s Island, Elinor and Roger founded University Associates for International Health, a nonprofit. Staffing Arabia’s hospitals and professional schools sent Elinor crisscrossing Eurasia to interview and hire hundreds of employees.

After Roger became director of Boston’s Museum of Science in 1981, Elinor threw herself into organizing blockbuster exhibits and raising money to build an Omni theater. Widowed at age 60 in 1987, her stories of Ramses the Great drew crowds to their final exhibit.

Elinor gave her grandchildren the world. Riding camels past the Great Pyramid of Giza was not enough; they searched for better pyramids, got lost, and ended up in an Egyptian Army firing range. At age 85, Elinor moved to Lincoln, wrote a memoir, True Tales of Jungle India, and explored her new town, walking four miles a day, every day, in every weather. She waved to bus drivers, talked to police officers, pet dogs, and told her stories to whomever would listen — which, it turned out, was everyone.

She is survived by her children, Kathleen, Wendy, and Quaife Nichols, and her grandchildren Kathleen and Roger Creel, and Wellesley, Denver, and Alex Nichols.

A memorial service in her honor will be held on Saturday, Nov. 5 at 1 pm at the First Parish Church. Please RSVP here for the preceding luncheon at noon. Donations in her honor may be made to the Nature Conservancy.

Editor’s note: Following is a remembrance written and posted on LincolnTalk by Kathleen Nichols.

In the beginning she walks easily. Four miles a day, seven days a week, no matter the weather. Eager to meet you, wanting to hear your story, ready to tell a story, hoping your dog was friendly.

Thanks, nice dogs large and small, for warm fur and wet kisses.

Thanks, Lincoln Garden Club, for the water fountain and the beauty of Peace Park. She needed both.

Thanks to Lincoln’s school children who, racing past on Wednesday afternoons without knocking her down, gave of their exuberance.

Thanks, Lincoln, for offering her rides on wet and cold days. And for accepting when she cheerfully and unequivocally declined. Declining made her feel stronger.

She needs a cane now, hearing aids, glasses. She forgets your names and faces, is amazed you know hers.

Thanks, Lincoln Police Department, for protecting her crosswalk and listening to her tall tales.

Thanks, Lincoln Library, for supplying a steady stream of good books.

She wears out several canes. Now switches to a rollator — red — so she can paint the town. Miles per day decreases to three. Pace: slow but resolute.

Thanks, Lincoln, for calling her an inspiration; it made her try harder.

Thanks, bus drivers of Doherty’s Garage, for every honk, wave, smile.

Mark Twain said, “I can live for two months on a good compliment.” Thanks, young biker who shouted, “Hello, Invincible!”

Pierce Hill Road gets steeper. She stops to rest in the middle of the road. Thanks for stopping to ask if she’s ok. And for telling her to move over.

Onwards and upwards she walks.
It takes three heart attacks to stop her.

When last seen, Mama was heading east towards Harvard Medical School, eager to tell her story to medical students studying anatomy.

Thanks, Lincoln, for seeing, accepting, protecting, and cherishing her.

Jim Cunningham

Flags on town buildings will be lowered to half-staff next week to commemorate James F. Cunningham of Lincoln, who died at age 73 on Friday, September 2, 2022. Jim passed away peacefully with the assistance of hospice after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was predeceased by his mother and father, Claire Cunningham and Robert M. Cunningham, and he has left behind his brothers, Peter and William (Billy).

Jim had great love for the town of Lincoln, for his alma mater Cornell, and for Kent Island off the coast of Grand Manan in Canada.

Born, raised, and educated in Lincoln, Jim was a devoted community volunteer. He single-handedly organized, implemented and managed the town’s local cable television program, helping to increase access to the activities of town government and other community events. Jim possessed a keen engineering mind and a small-town sensibility about managing budgets, and he served for decades completely without compensation.

The Select Board used the occasion of the March 2022 Annual Town Meeting to honor Jim by presenting him with the annual Bright Light award for singlehandedly launching and maintaining Lincoln’s local cable program. In its presentation, the board said:

”Each year we present the Bright Light award to a resident or town staff member whose contributions to our town deserve to be celebrated. Now if you have ever come across Comcast channel 8 or Verizon channel 33 on your television, you will quickly realize that Lincoln has its own vibrant cable TV channel.  We owe this great viewing alternative to CNN, Fox News or ESPN to our own Jim Cunningham.

“Jim was appointed to Lincoln’s cable committee way back in 2002 and has served as its chair for most of this time. As chair, Jim has been our point person for license negotiations with our cable providers.  More importantly, Jim has built our local cable channel from the ground up. An electrical engineer by education and training, Jim designed and helped install our cable programming infrastructure. He not only manages the technology and equipment, but also does most of the filming and production that allows the town to broadcast many key meeting (such as Select Board and School Committee meetings), special events, and lectures, providing a truly valuable service to the town. Jim spends many hours each week recording and broadcasting this town content for our enjoyment. 

“We on the Select Board are especially appreciative of how Jim always manages to film us from our good sides! Jim’s technical know-how and passion for what he does, which he has provided free of charge for many years, has saved the town thousands upon thousands of dollars, as other communities have needed to create full time employee positions for this work.

“Born, raised, and educated here, Jim is immensely proud of his Lincoln roots. And we could not be more proud and grateful to you, Jim, for all that you have contributed to Lincoln. Please join me in giving Jim Cunningham a round of applause as this year’s bright light award recipient.”

Additionally, working closely with Save Our Heritage, Jim was project manager for the restoration of the Barrett house in Concord.

Jim graduated from Cornell University with undergraduate and master’s degrees in electrical engineering. As an undergraduate student, he was business manager, photo editor and editor-in-chief of the yearbook for two years. Since graduation, Jim has remained involved as a volunteer, advocate and donor to Cornell. He served on the advisory board for Systems Engineering and spent time teaching students about systems engineering and its tools. In recent years he established the James F. Cunningham ’71 Assistant Director of Student Project Teams in the College of Engineering with an endowed gift. Mostly Jim talked about his time working with students and fellow Cornellians with great affection.

Jim Cunningham’s perseverance and talent brought the Kent Island’s weather station into modern times. What his father started in 1938 continues today, available to the world on the web, thanks in great part to his son.

A private graveside service will be held at Lincoln Cemetery. Jim’s public memorial service will be announced at a later date. Arrangements are under the care of the Concord Funeral Home. Click here to leave a message or remembrance.

Onerva Korhonen

Onerva Miriam (Watka) Korhonen age 101 of Lincoln passed away on August 11. Onerva faced the world in a positive fashion right to the end, smiling and appreciative of everyone who helped. She was predeceased by husbands Edwin (1919-1987) and Edward (1920-2008), mother to Wayne (Margaret), Cynthia, and Dana (Patti); grandmother to Adam (Morgan), Rachel (Keith), Kathryn, and Ethan; great grandmother to Wesley, Cooper, and Nathan; and aunt to many nephews and nieces. 

Onerva was always involved in her community: she volunteered in the schools, at church, and on the Council on Aging. She still sang in the choir at age 99. She worked with the 4-H Club. She was a reader. She spoke Finnish fluently and she loved to paint. She loved her neighbors. She believed in women’s, LGBTQIA, and immigrant rights and said so out loud. She cross-country skied with the “ski group.” She will be missed and remembered.

Burial was in Lincoln Cemetery. Arrangements were under the care of Concord Funeral Home. Click here to leave a remembrance.

Henry Francis

Henry A. Francis, 83, of Lincoln died on May 21, 2022 from complications of lung cancer. He is survived by his wife of 56 years, Phoebe Lee Francis, his son Andrew and his wife Jennifer Lynch, and granddaughter little Phoebe, all of Boston; two brothers, Bartlett Francis of Santa Barbara, Calif., and Robert Colgate Francis of Port Townsend, Wash.; nieces Kirsten Francis of Encinitas, Calif., and Karina Francis of Los Angeles; and nephews Walter Allen Francis of Seattle and Craig Francis of Olympia, Wash.

Henry was born in Pittsfield on October 17, 1938. In 1944 the family moved to Santa Barbara., Calif. He later attended the Groton School, graduated from Harvard in 1960, and received a PhD in mechanical engineering from Imperial College London. Upon his return to the U.S., he worked at Draper Labs in Cambridge. His interest in things mechanical lasted a lifetime. He was able to take almost any sort of device, disassemble it, and put it back together in working condition, often achieving what seemed to others an impossible task.

His avocation in life was traditional jazz. Originally a trumpet player, one day he decided he wasn’t playing well, threw down the instrument and decided to take up piano instead, despite never having had a piano lesson. He played with bands in college and during summer vacations while working on a ranch in Wyoming. Later he became known as one of the prime exponents of the Harlem Stride School of piano playing.

In 1991 he founded a seven-piece band, The Swing Legacy. The band mostly played the music of the 1930s and 1940s which included many songs from The Great American Songbook, many with Henry’s arrangements. The Swing Legacy played at weddings, dances, concerts and parties in the Boston area and beyond. He played many solo gigs, as well as duos with John Clark on clarinet. His music will be missed by all who heard him, especially by his wife Phoebe, who listened to him practicing the songs every evening when she was preparing dinner.

Henry was an outdoor enthusiast and spent many enjoyable hours biking, rowing on the local rivers, and walking the trails of Lincoln with his dog. He was acutely aware of his surroundings, especially the birds and trees which he learned to identify. He planted many trees on his property in Lincoln and carefully watched them mature. He never gave up the battle with the squirrels, and enjoyed devising methods to outwit the critters.

Henry will be sorely missed by all who knew him. His final years were greatly enhanced by the joy of being a grandparent. His happiest moments were spent in the company of his beloved granddaughter, Phoebe, now seven years old, who called him “HenPa.”

A celebration of his life will be held in the fall. Donations to his memory may be made to the Lincoln Land Conservation Trust, 145 Lincoln Rd., Lincoln MA 01773 or to a charity of one’s choice.

Arrangements under the care of Concord Funeral Home, 74 Belknap St., Concord, MA 01742 (978-369-3388).

James Buckalew

James Kenneth Buckalew, 88, of Lincoln, died May 24 following a long illness.

He was born on October 24, 1933 in Peru, Ind., the oldest of three children. He attended public schools in Peru and distinguished himself in high school as a championship debater Jim joined the U.S. Army in 1954 and after his discharge from active duty was an Army reservist until 1962. Jim returned to school and graduated with a B.S. in 1958 from Indiana State University. From 1958-1960 he pursued graduate studies and worked as a teaching assistant at the University of Hawaii. He received his M.A. in 1961 from Indiana State, where he wrote his thesis on his experiences with the potential of educational television in Hawaii. He received his Ph.D. in 1961 from the University of Iowa, where his dissertation research focused on the role of television news anchors as gatekeepers.

During most of his graduate study and for decades afterwards, Jim worked as a practicing journalist and broadcaster, from his first radio assignments as a reporter for WBOW radio in Terre Haute, Indiana, KGU Radio in Honolulu, and WSUI radio in Iowa City, to his last at WCBQ radio in San Diego. He also had many commissioned assignments for newspapers covering elections, reviewing plays, and reporting on sporting events. He was popular as a public address announcer, a role that he filled at San Diego State University basketball games, and he co-hosted a television series devoted to thoroughbred racing on the cable network Prime Ticket.

Jim joined the University of Iowa in 1963 as an instructor in journalism and head of radio/TV news. In 1967 he joined the faculty of San Diego State University, where he retired as a full professor of journalism in 1999. But his love of the classroom led him to continue to teach at small colleges in the
Los Angeles area until he finally retired at the age of 80. During his San Diego State career, he published numerous scholarly articles as well a book with colleague Tim Wulfemeyer, Mass Media in the New Millennium.

Jim’s hobby for most of his adult life was thoroughbred racing. He was fortunate to live near enough two famous race courses, the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club and Santa Anita Park, to become deeply involved in the sport as a member of a small group of investors who owned several successful horses, including Reason to Study and Study to Pass. He was also very adept at forecasting the results of races and won the Pick Six on more than one occasion; consequently, he was frequently consulted by newcomers hoping to learn how to “invest” at the racetrack.

Jim will be remembered by all who knew him as a kind, honorable, and generous man, a devoted teacher, and a loving father and husband. He was preceded in death by his parents, Homer Buckalew and Marguerite Anderson Buckalew of Peru, Ind.; his brother Charles Buckalew of Terre Haute, Ind., and his daughter-in-law, Gina Grandolfo of Tustin, Calif.

Survivors include his wife, Margaret McLaughlin of Lincoln, and his sons Michael Buckalew of Tustin, Calif., Thomas Buckalew of San Diego, and Robert Buckalew of Redding, Calif. and their mother, Karen Dempsey of San Diego; and sons Brett Buckalew and Kevin Buckalew of Los Angeles and their mother, Sally Hixon of San Diego.

James is also survived by his stepson, Malcolm McLaughlin and his wife, Julie Lamirande McLaughlin of Lucas, Texas, and his stepdaughter, Julia Cody Walkup and her husband Ward Gale Walkup IV of Lincoln; grandsons Shane and Lucas Buckalew of Redding, Calif., and their mother, Darcy Kelley-Buckalew; grandson Nicholas Buckalew of Tustin, Calif.; step-grandson Jackson McLaughlin of Lucas, Texas, and step-granddaughters Lila McLaughlin of Lucas, Texas and Kathryn Walkup of Lincoln.

Jim is also survived by his sister Joyce Buckalew Whittenberger and her husband Steven, of Boerne, Texas, sister Risa Buckalew Utley and her husband Michael of Nashville, Tenn., and sister-in-law Nancy Buckalew of Terre Haute, Ind.

Services and burial with military honors for James will be held at the Massachusetts National Cemetery in Bourne. An online celebration of his life will follow later. In lieu of flowers, donations in his honor may be made to the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, 234 Outlet Pointe Boulevard, Suite A, Columbia, S.C. 29210-5667.

Arrangements are under the care of Dee Funeral Home & Cremation Service of Concord. Click here to see his online guestbook.

Geraldine “Gerry” Lattimore, a lifelong resident of Massachusetts and Maine, died on April 22 at the age of 84.

She was a sculptor, sang for years in the Concord Chorus, and wrote poetry and stories in secret. She took many extension courses at Radcliffe and elsewhere, leading to lifelong friendships. She was also an inveterate storm-chaser. Deeply self-effacing, she never sought renown, but loved art and nature. She nurtured young people who shared her passions or simply needed shelter and affection. She was dear to her friends for her imagination, wit, and kindness. Although shy, she (a confirmed Democrat) never hesitated to speak out vehemently for women’s rights and against racial injustice and war.

Gerry grew up in Belmont, the daughter of Gerald Harrison, a radio pioneer, sports announcer, and sailor, and Janet Hoch Harrison, a radio pianist, organist, and station manager. Gerry went to Abbot Academy Andover and graduated from Beaver Country Day School. While at Colby College, she married Hugh Nazor in 1957. When he was at Wharton, they were house parents  for the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children and cared for homeless boys, which they remembered fondly.

From 1962–1972, Gerry lived in a 1738 farm house with 50 acres of fields and woods in Bolton. When Gerry sold the property, she introduced Bolton to the practice of land conservation. From 1973 onward, she lived in Lincoln, spending summers on a Maine island. From 1978 until the early 1980s, Gerry worked as a fundraiser for Physicians for Social Responsibility, assisting Helen Caldecott in her fight against “nuclear madness.” She also shared a sculpting studio in West Concord where they hired live models and introduced her grandchildren to the complexity of the human form.

Gerry’s life in Lincoln and Harpswell, Maine was shared with her two daughters, Karen Nazor and Leslie Nazor Riversmith, and with Andrew, Julia, and John Linnell, and Margaret Macy, the children of her second husband.

In 1992 she married her third husband, Professor David Lattimore of Brown University, adding to the extended clan his six children by a former marriage: Michael Lattimore, Maria Sheppard, Clare Lattimore, Anne Price, Evan Lattimore, and the late and much-loved Rosette Lattimore. Gerry also leaves a  brother, Stanley Harrison, and his children, Michael Harrison and Rebecca Harrison Moser. She leaves Ama Harrison, widow of her deceased brother Theodore Harrison, their two sons, Cobina and Anthony Kwame Harrison, and daughter Joan Nowak. In all, she leaves 15 grandchildren.

In celebration of Gerry’s life, an informal gathering will be held at her Lincoln home on Saturday, June 4 at noon. Click here to send flowers or make a donation in her memory.