Charles Calvin
Charles Calvin died on May 8. After a career at Polaroid, he was actively involved in Parkinson’s studies at Massachusetts General Hospital, where his brain has been donated for research. Click here for full obituary.
James Newkirk
Newkirk, who died on May 17 at age 75, started and ran several businesses in transportation and other fields. He was also an addictions counselor. Click here for full obituary.
Mary O’Brien
Former nurse’s aide and principal’s assistant at the Lincoln School. Click here for full obituary.
Paola Rossoni
Former researcher in pathological anatomy and histology. Click here for full obituary.
Richard Puffer
Richard Puffer passed away on May 8 at the age of 82. He served in the U.S. Marines, had a long career as an architect, and was an accomplished painter and birder. Click here for full obituary.
Alan Burt
Alan Burt passed away on May 7 at the age of 84. He spent most of his career in the site location research department at Stop & Shop, with a second career in real estate appraisal. He was also a Lifetime Member of the Appalachian Mountain Club. Click here for full obituary.
Herbert Pollack
Herbert Wasserman
Herbert Wasserman, 92 (April 19) — He marched behind Rev. Martin Luther King at Selma and could be found many years later on the Lexington Battle Green where, in a tricorn hat, he regaled tourists with tales of Revolutionary War battles. Click here for full obituary.
John W. Earle, 94 (April 17) — A U.S. Army Ranger who served at Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge during World War II. Click here for full obituary.
William Reals
William Reals, 94 (April 13) — Fondly remembered at The Commons in Lincoln as “Mr. Bill,” the man with his well-worn tan briefcase always in hand. Click here for full obituary.
Miriam Schaffel
Miriam Schaffel, 95 (April 12) — The longtime resident of Pittsburgh and later The Commons in Lincoln died of Covid-19 in Cambridge. Click here for full obituary.
Elizabeth Whitman, 91 (March 15). Click here for memorial donation information.
Joseph Hingston
Joseph A. Hingston of Lincoln died on March 6, 2020. He was born in Boston on Nov. 29, 1925. and served in the U.S. Marine Corps during WWII. He worked for the Boston Public Schools Department of Planning & Engineering until his retirement and then worked with his son Wayne building New England School Services, which is now run by his grandson Brian. Survivors include his wife Gloria of Lincoln. Donations in his memory may be made to Care Dimensions Hospice House, 125 Winter St., Lincoln, MA 01773. Click here for full obituary (courtesy of Douglass Funeral Home).
Phyllis Wasserman
Phyllis Wasserman of Lincoln passed away peacefully on the morning of March 22, 2020. She grew up in Chisholm, Minn. With her husband Herbert Wasserman, she raised her two children in Lexington and was Director of Volunteers at the former Deaconess Hospital. Donations in her memory may be made to the Concord Orchestra, 51 Walden St., Concord, MA 01742. Click here for full obituary (courtesy of Levine Chapels).
Bartsch died on February 23 at age 55. He was an alumnus of Brandeis university and UC-Santa Cruz and worked at the Virgin Islands’ first internet provider, Cobex, Inc. in St. Thomas, where he was head software engineer. Later, Bartsch was director of information services at Fisher College in Boston for 19 years. Read full obituary.
Liz King
King died in Hanover, N.H. on February 25 at the age of 82. She worked at the Boston Lying-In Hospital with Dr. T. Berry Brazelton and also at Massachusetts General Hospital. She and her late husband William A. King lived in Lincoln for 38 years. She co-founded the Lincoln Youth Soccer Program and later was assistant director of the Lincoln Council on Aging for 17 years. She was also a member of the First Parish in Lincoln. Read full obituary.
The February 27 article headlined “$3.5m cut from school project, but alternate funding is a possibility” erroneously implied that money in the town’s free cash account and the money that was recommended for spending on the public safety radio system were two different things. In fact, the radio-system sum was budgeted by the Finance Committee to come out of free cash. The article also did not clearly present FinCom member Tom Sander’s views. The original article has been amended.
Nancy Ritchie
Nancy M. (Pratt) Ritchie died at Emerson Hospital in Concord on February 13 at age 76. She was the beloved wife of James Ritchie, with whom she shared 53 years of loving marriage.
Nancy was born in Somerville on August 8, 1943, the daughter of the late Harry and Beulah (Barry) Pratt. She enjoyed being raised in Burlington and graduated from the town’s high school in 1961. She was then employed at Lincoln Laboratory for 12 years.
Active in the Lincoln community, Nancy was faithful to her church. She served as secretary of St. Anne’s in-the-Fields Episcopal Church for 13 years, and later, as an administrative assistant and assistant town clerk for Lincoln.
She was dedicated to her family and friends, and will be remembered as a fabulous cook.
In addition to her husband, Jim, she will be forever missed by two daughters, Nicole Ann Freutel and her husband Trevor of Renton, Wash., and Melissa Noelle Ritchie of Lincoln; two grandchildren, Alek and Ethan Freutel; a brother, Harry D. Pratt and his wife Carole; and several nieces and nephews. She was also the sister of the late Pat Munoz.
Family and friends will gather for visiting hours on Thursday, Feb. 20 from 6–8 p.m. in the Dee Funeral Home, 27 Bedford St., Concord. Nancy’s funeral service will be celebrated on Friday, Feb. 21 at 10 a.m. in St. Anne’s in-the-Fields Episcopal Church in Lincoln, with burial at Lincoln Cemetery.
In lieu of flowers, contributions in her memory may be made to St. Anne’s in-the-Fields Episcopal Church, 147 Concord Road, Lincoln, MA 01773.
Arrangements are under the care of Dee Funeral Home & Cremation Service of Concord. To share a remembrance or to send a condolence in her online guestbook, please visit www.DeeFuneralHome.com.
Residents can hear the latest on the proposed rezoning of the Lincoln Station area at a public forum on Wednesday, Feb. 5 at 7 p.m. in Town Hall.
Officials have been working with the Metropolitan Area Planning Council to rezone on rezoning Lincoln’s village center to create equitable transit-oriented development that will allows for housing options and create a vibrant, active walkable, and sustainable village center. The South Lincoln Planning and Implementation Committee’s Planning and Zoning team.
Last May, the group presented its proposal for the new South Lincoln Village District would have two subareas: business, which emphasizes commercial or mixed use, and residential, which provides a variety of housing options close to transit and retail amenities. The residential subarea would allow buildings up to three and a half stories further back from Lincoln Road to accommodate greater density.
St. Julia Parish, Weston/Lincoln invites you to join us on Saturday, Feb. 8 from 2–4 p.m. at Bemis Hall in Lincoln as we share our memories of a beloved parishioner, Sylvia Kennedy (1934-2018) and her contributions to our community. Please RSVP to Colm McGarry (cmcgarry@stjulia.org) if you plan to attend. All are welcome.
Sadie Gustafson-Zook
Sadie Gustafson-Zook is the featured performer at the next LOMA (Lincoln Open-Mike Acoustic) night on Monday, Feb. 10 in the Lincoln Public Library’s Tarbell Room. The event runs from 7–10 p.m., and she’ll perform a half-hour set starting around 8:30.
Gustafson-Zook holds a master’s degree in jazz and contemporary music from the Longy School of Music. Since moving to Boston from Indiana in 2017, she’s collaborated with some cutting-edge acoustic musicians from New England including Julian Pinelli (violinist with Ben Sollee), Ethan Setiawan (national mandolin champion) and Dan Klingsberg (bassist of Ruthless Moon).
Admission is free and refreshments are provided. Performers can sign up at the event or email Rich Eilbert at loma3re@gmail.com for a slot. There is a sound system with mikes and instrumental pickups suitable for individuals or small groups.
James Spindler
A memorial service will be held at St. Anne’s in-the-Fields Episcopal Church on Saturday, Dec. 14 at 11 a.m. for James Walter Spindler, a resident of Lincoln since 1968, who died on December 7 at the age of 80.
From 1968 to 1979, Spindler practiced law in Boston with Hale and Dorr (now WilmerHale), concentrating on securities and mergers and acquisitions work. In 1979 he became the first in-house counsel for Computervision Corp., a tech company based in Bedford. Beginning in 1985 he pioneered the provision of legal services as independent general counsel for companies which lacked full-time in-house counsel. In 1992 he co-founded and chaired for about 15 years the Association of Independent General Counsel, an informal organization that hosted speakers, discussed legal questions and practice management issues, and served as a support group for its members.
Spindler was Lincoln’s representative to SILC, a subregional planning organization, from 1969 to 1975. From 1977–83 he served as a member of the Lincoln School Committee and was chair in 1980–81. He served on the Lincoln Commission on Disabilities from 2007–09, representing the commission on the committee overseeing the renovation of the town offices. He was senior warden of St. Anne’s Episcopal Church for two terms and sang bass in its choir for 25 years. A high point of his service at St. Anne’s was chairing the search committee that in 1986 recommended the calling of Mark Hollingsworth, Jr., who became its new rector.
In 1984 Spindler won the Lincoln Public Library Centennial Spelling Contest. His older son, David, then a junior in high school, was runner-up. He could frequently be seen working in the yard and fields of their 1846 Greek revival house, which he and his wife renovated. He often walked on nearby roads as therapy for Parkinson’s disease (diagnosed in 1990) and enjoyed visiting with neighbors along the way.
Spindler loved all things related to language: reading, etymology, editing, and foreign languages. He studied Russian, Latin, and French, and learned German as an adult. As a young teenager, he composed gibberish chants for his nieces and nephews that they can still recite (“Beep moo see so battery boo…”)
In addition to reading, Spindler enjoyed swimming, playing squash and tennis, playing the piano, singing, and listening to music. He could easily be located wherever there was food, unabashedly helping himself to seconds and thirds on dessert. Every weekend he would make a pancake or waffle lunch for his family.
Spindler graduated from Cornell University, where he majored in government, took a number of courses in Russian, rowed on the men’s varsity heavyweight crew, chaired the Student Government Academic Affairs Committee, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year.He was a member of Cornell’s varsity eight-man crew that in 1961 was runner-up in both the Eastern Sprints Championships and the IRA Regatta, which served as collegiate rowing’s national championships at the time. He received the Eastern College Athletic Conference award as the most outstanding scholar-athlete in his graduating class.
Spindler was selected as the class marshal for his Cornell College of Arts and Sciences graduating class. During the summer after his freshman year, he was the tallest member of the specially recruited World’s Tallest Laundry Crew, who used their formidable reach to fold 106-inch sheets for resorts in Glacier National Park.
In the summer of 1961 following graduation, Spindler traveled to Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, and Poland as a member of a group of 11 students representing the National Council of Churches. The trip, which focused on religious life in the countries visited, occurred at a time when few U.S. citizens were able to travel behind the Iron Curtain. On the trip he bought a Russian fur hat, which he wore so frequently in the family’s 1962 VW Beetle that it finally wore a hole in the roof upholstery.
After earning a degree from Harvard Law School, Spindler went on active duty with the U.S. Marine Corps and attained the rank of captain. He served as a legal officer (prosecutor and defense counsel) in Vietnam with the Third Marine Division and then in California (doing primarily appellate review work) with the Fifth Marine Division. During law school and for about 15 years thereafter, he worked with Professor Harold Berman in translating the Russian Criminal Codes and Judiciary Act, published by Harvard University Press.
Spindler is survived by his wife of 55 years, Mary Griffing Spindler of Lincoln, whom he married on August 29, 1964 at the Presbyterian Church on Shelter Island, N.Y.; son David Neill Spindler and wife K.C. Swanson, of Arlington, Va.; son Henry Carlton Spindler and wife Carol Bertucci Spindler of Keene, N.H.; and five grandchildren (Samantha Dorothy and Clara Abigail Spindler of Arlington, and Hannah Madeline, Megan Elizabeth and Evan Bernard Spindler of Keene).
Born in Middletown, Ohio to Walter Herbert Spindler of Peoria, Ill. and Mayme Laue Spindler of Shumway, Ill., Spindler was preceded in death by his three older siblings, Donald Charles Spindler of Parma, Ohio, Margery Anne Spindler McIntosh of Middletown, Ohio, and Alan Herbert Spindler of Davenport, Iowa. He is survived by numerous nieces and nephews, only a few of whom learned the gibberish chants.
A reception in the church will follow the December 14 service. Burial in the Lincoln Cemetery will be private. Gifts may be made in his name to Parkinson’s Foundation, 200 SE 1st St., Suite 800, Miami FL 33131 or www.parkinson.org, and St. Anne’s Episcopal Church, P.O. Box 6, Lincoln MA 01773, c/o Music Fund.
Arrangements are under the care of Glenn D. Burlamachi of Concord Funeral Home. To share a memory or offer a condolence, visit www.concordfuneral.com.