obits

Jane Langton

Jane Langton, 95, a prolific mystery writer and illustrator, died in hospice care near her home in Lincoln on December 29. She received the Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master Award in 2017 for her career, which include numerous books set in New England and specifically the Concord area. Click here for full obituary (New York Times).

Carol Seeckts

There will be visiting hours on Friday, Jan. 4 from 4–7 p.m. in the Dee Funeral Home (27 Bedford St., Concord) for Carol “Lee” Seeckts, a certified nursing assistant and mother of four who died of cancer on December 25. She graduated from Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School in 1962 and lived most recently in Acton. A funeral service will take place at the Dee Funeral Home on Saturday, Jan. 5 at 11 a.m. followed immediately by an end-of-life celebration at the Pierce House in Lincoln. Click here for full obituary. 

John Ritsher

Services will be held on Monday, Dec. 31 at 11 a.m. at First Parish Church, 24 River St., Norwell for John Ritsher, a Norwell resident and former Lincoln Board of Selectman member who died on December 10 at age 88. A former senior partner at Ropes & Gray, he and his family lived in a Lincoln home he designed with famed architect Henry Hoover. Click here for full obituary. 

 

A public memorial service will be held at Pierce House in Lincoln on January 26, 2019 at 1 p.m. for Ruth Johnstone Wales. The former Christian Science Monitor page 1 editor and long-time Lincoln Historical District Commission chair passed away shortly before her 91st birthday, on December 2 in Belmont, with two of her daughters by her side.

Ruth was a purposeful planner, meticulous and particular, for whom making contributions to society was extremely important. She was independent and encouraged independence in her children. She had high expectations for herself and others, but was extremely supportive to family and friends.  She was politically liberal but personally conservative — frugal and self-sacrificing, while remaining generous to those she loved. 

Ruth, the daughter of Frederika Ammarell Johnstone and Robert Montgomery Johnstone, was born in Hollis, Queens in New York City on Christmas Day in 1927. Her father was a businessman and her mother was an artist. She was raised a Christian Scientist and remained faithful to her beliefs as a long-time member of the First Church of Christ Scientist in Concord.

After graduating from high school, Ruth won a scholarship to University of Chicago, where she received her bachelor’s degree. Her lifelong love of learning continuing through graduate school at Northeastern University, where she received her master’s degree in education, and after her working career was over, she was an avid participant in the Harvard University Institute for Learning in Retirement.

Ruth met R. Langdon Wales while working at the Christian Science Monitor in Boston after college and married him in Hollis, N.Y., on September 9, 1951. They enjoyed a loving relationship that produced four children: Roland, Rebecca and twins, Amy and Rachel.  Langdon was a mechanical engineer and inventor and his work took them to Reading, Mass., then briefly to East Aurora, N.Y., before settling in Lincoln, where they built their dream home — a mid-century Modern house designed by architects Hoover & Hill on two acres in the Brown’s Wood neighborhood. Amy and Rachel were born there shortly after the family moved there in 1959. For 57 years, Ruth continued living at 18 Moccasin Hill, nestled in the woods above Valley Pond, where she loved to swim, in the home where she and Lang had raised their family.

Ruth’s work life took hold after her younger daughters entered school and she taught grade school at nearby Hanscom Air Force Base. She then became a technical editor for Mitre Corp., making use of her love of words and attention to detail. From there she returned to the Christian Science Monitor as an editor, working her way up to editing the front page of the daily newspaper and later became editor of the international edition. Ruth considered her time at the Monitor to be her dream job and found it enormously exciting and fulfilling. She continued working there until 2001, retiring at age 74.

Ruth and Lang maintained an active social life, taking up Scottish country dancing with a Concord group that held weekly dances, a New Year’s Eve Hogmanay, regional balls in full regalia, weekend dancing retreats in New Hampshire — and even world travel with Scottish Dancing Tours. 

They took their young family on outdoor adventures, frequently canoeing, camping and hiking, climbing a majority of the peaks of New Hampshire’s White Mountains. As the children grew up and left the nest, Ruth began to travel internationally with Lang, which she loved. Taking advantage of Lang’s work in Italy, they also traveled to Germany, Russia, Sweden, England, and Scotland, and also to southern Africa to visit their daughter in the Peace Corps. 

Both made contributions to their community, with Lang active on the Planning Commission and Ruth active with the Lincoln League of Women Voters and representing Lincoln on the Minuteman Regional Vocational Technical High School Committee. Long after her term ended, she referred to “my school” and enjoyed taking her visitors on tours.

Both Ruth and Lang enjoyed early music, and Ruth learned to play the harpsichord that Lang started building in their Lincoln home (it was finished by Peter Watchhorn after Lang’s death). Her time with Lang was cut short in 1989 when he died unexpectedly at age 62. She continued on, working at the Monitor and following her interests with friends and family. She purchased a small condo in the Fenway area of Boston to be closer to the Monitor.

An avid appreciator of the arts, Ruth enjoyed listening to classical music at the nearby Boston Symphony and the Boston Ballet, and going to numerous theater performances with a friend or family member, as she had previously done with Lang. In retirement, she frequently used her condo as home base during the week while attending classes at Harvard.

She continued to travel throughout the United States, visiting her college roommate Sally Raisbeck in Hawaii and going on tours with groups to England, Scotland, Australia, and New Zealand and with her daughter Rebecca to Kenya, Tanzania, Belize, Turkey, Greece, and Italy.

An avid reader, Ruth favored classics, murder mysteries, female authors, biographies, and local history and encouraged all family members to attend college, helping nearly all of her grandchildren, in addition to her own children, earn a bachelor’s degree or greater.

She enhanced the native plants in her landscape and loved the woods of Lincoln. She frequently visited Lincoln Conservation lands as well as Great Meadows in Concord for walks and wildlife.  In addition to her swims at Valley Pond, she loved to eat outdoors in her screen house, rain or shine, temperature permitting.

Ruth with her good friend Lucretia Giese and others were passionate preservers of architectural heritage on the Lincoln Historical District and Lincoln Historical Commission. She and Lang were founding members and advocates for Brown’s Wood preservation, houses, and history.  Her commitment extended to carefully maintaining their home on Moccasin Hill and preserving its original design features with the help of artisan, woodworker, and carpenter Norman Levey, who ran his business out of Lang’s large garage shop for decades.

Ruth’s artistic talents included painting, hooked rugs, sewing, calligraphy, silkscreening, and sketch-booking. She was a collector of art produced by talented friends and acquaintances. An involuntary collector of owls that began with concrete “Howie” (who “lived” outside and looked in through a window next to a door of the house, and was named for Howland Owl of Pogo fame), Ruth found herself identified as a lover of owls. Howie inspired family and friends to search the world for owls to give her, and her collection of owls in all sizes and forms numbered in the hundreds.

Ruth was passionate about family and made a family genealogy book for each of her children with many details about five main branches of the family. She and Lang had traveled to Scotland to learn more family history and later to Schwabendorf, Germany for a 300th anniversary for all descendants. She loved family reunions and encouraged children and their kids to gather every five years in a new special place — Cape Cod cabins, Sturbridge Village, Saddleback Maine cottages, Blue Heron Maple Sugar Farm and Stump Sprouts cross-country ski lodge in Western Mass, Maho Bay Camps on St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Wayside Inn in Sudbury, and, naturally, in Lincoln. Thanks to these family gatherings, her six grandchildren from three households are all close friends. A number of her children’s friends and partners looked up to her as a sort of second mom, including Peg Rawson Shealy, Camila Akerlund, and Terri Young, and eagerly befriended adult friends of her children and learned about their lives and welcomed their children.

Ruth is survived by her son Roland and his wife Donna; daughter Rebecca and her partner Chuck; daughter Amy; daughter Rachel; and grandchildren Marissa (with husband Amit), Benjamin, Fenic, Carin, Christopher, and Robert. Also surviving are Ruth’s nephews, children of brother Robert Johnstone and wife Peggy, now deceased: Doug (with wife Karen, son Brian with his wife Dariana, and grandson Avery), and Richard (with wife Kathy and children Danny and Sarah, with her husband Scott and children Cameron and Everett).

Ruth is also survived by lifelong friends, Phyllis Rappaport of Kalamazoo, Mich., and Marie Tegeler of Hingham, who first met because their three mothers were friendly. The three stayed in close touch over many years. Donations in lieu of flowers may be made to Massachusetts Audubon Society (click here to donate, or click here to leave remembrances and condolences.

Services will be held at Douglass Funeral Home at 51 Worthen Rd. in Lexington on Saturday, Dec. 1 at 9:45 a.m. for Eric Olson of Lincoln (formerly of Lexington), who passed away November 24. he leaves four children (Matthew, Lincoln resident Margaret, Sigrid, and Charles) and four grandchildren (Katherine and Erik Svetlichny and Benjamin and Peter Price-Olson). He was preceded in death by his wife of nearly 60 years, Setha G. Olson.

Born June 4, 1925, the only child of hardworking but poor Swedish immigrants, Eric was raised in Montclair, N.J. during the Great Depression, and by way of his intelligence and hard work was able to win a full scholarship to Columbia University, shortly before entering the U.S. Army in 1943. He trained in the artillery and never saw combat, but was scheduled to participate in the invasion of the Japanese home islands when Japan surrendered.

After the war, he graduated from Columbia with degrees in mathematics and physics and embarked on a successful career in engineering, mostly in defense research and development, with a short stint in solar energy research in the late 1970s. He was also very supportive of Setha’s professional career, both when they were first together and when she returned to the workforce when their children were older.

The greatest challenge of Eric’s life was advocating and providing for his severely autistic older son. At a time when autism was routinely blamed on supposedly uncaring parents and services were nonexistent, Eric and Setha worked tirelessly to find help for their son and to make it easier for other parents of autistic and intellectually disabled children to find help and resources.

Eric became a board member and then president of the Association for Mentally Ill Children and, together with Setha, were committed and active members as AMIC and other advocacy organizations fought for for the passage of Massachusetts Chapter 766, the first law to guarantee the right to a free and appropriate public education for all children regardless of disability in 1972. This legislation became a model for the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

Together with his family, Eric enjoyed skiing and hiking, and was also an accomplished mineral collector in his youth. After he retired from the MITRE Corp., he and Setha traveled extensively, including trekking to near Mount Everest in Nepal, traveling the Silk Road in China and Pakistan, and trips to Antarctica and the Galapagos Islands.

Interment will be at Westview Cemetery in Lexington. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Lurie Center for Autism.

John Brand French died quietly at his home in Lincoln, as he wished, on November 21 at the age of 89. Jack was known widely for his energy, good judgment, and open, generous spirit.

He was born in Springfield, Mass., on November 8, 1929 to the late Alden and Eleanor Brand French. Jack graduated from Williams College in 1951 and married Deborah Cole in June of that year. After graduating, he enlisted in the Navy, where he served on a destroyer and enjoyed teaching at the U.S. Navy Fleet Sonar School in Key West, Fla.

Jack graduated from Harvard Law School in 1957 and developed a distinguished career practicing corporate, business, and estate law in Boston for over 50 years, most recently as partner at Sullivan and Worcester.

He served as board chairman and trustee of the Boston Biomedical Research Institute, a director of the Conservation Law Foundation, and president and trustee of the deCordova Museum in Lincoln. Jack was especially dedicated to the town of Lincoln and served the town in many roles throughout his life including as member of the Conservation Commission, the School Committee, Board of Assessors, Library Committee member, and for 16 years as the Town Moderator.

Jack and Deb spent many summers on Vinalhaven, Maine, where they took great pleasure creating a summer place on the site of an abandoned granite quarry. They loved the exceptional beauty of the island and the island community, and they loved to be on the water sailing. Jack became an avid woodworker, producing wonderful furniture which he often gave as gifts.

Jack’s family loved him for his engaging and cheerful nature. He is remembered by Deborah, his wife of 67 years; son John Jr.  and his wife Olga Zizich of Ellicott City, Md;, daughter Lindsay and her husband Peter O’Neill of Providence, R.I.; daughter Hilary and her husband Christopher Foster of Wayland; son Stratton  and his wife Julie Henderson of Calais, Vt.; seven grandchildren who affectionately called him Jeefer (Danya, Karina, Piper, Ian, Alec, Lyle, and Eli); step-grandchildren Jason, Daniel, Alice and Claire; and his extended family of Frenches and Coles. He was a family man. He is preceded in death by three brothers, Peter, Alden Jr., and Hollis, and an infant grandson Corbin.

Family and friends are invited to gather for his memorial service at the First Parish of Lincoln  on Sunday, Dec. 16 at 2 p.m. with a reception to follow at the Pierce House. Additional parking will be available at the Pierce House with shuttle service available to and from the church. Burial at Lincoln Cemetery is private.

If you wish, donations in Jack’s memory may be sent to the Conservation Law Foundation. Condolences may be sent to P.O. Box 6303, Lincoln MA 01773 or to the Dee Funeral Home. Arrangements are under the care of Dee Funeral Home & Cremation Service of Concord. To share a remembrance or to send a condolence in his online guestbook, please click here.

(Obituary courtesy of Dee Funeral Home)

Patty Barkas Gregory, 59 (November 8) — Lincoln native and accomplished singer.

Catherine Basile, 91 (September 30) — grandmother of 19, great-grandmother of 19.

(Editor’s note: the following obituary was submitted directly to the Lincoln Squirrel by Lucretia’s brother, Henry B. Hoover Jr.)

Lucretia Hoover Giese (1937-2018) died at her home in Lincoln on October 16, 2018 of cancer. Born in Lincoln on May 23, 1937 as an identical twin to the late Henry B. and Lucretia J. Hoover, Lucretia graduated from Oberlin College and received her master’s degree in 1980, working subsequently at the Seattle Art Museum and as assistant curator in the Department of Paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

She met her late husband, Paul E. Giese, in Seattle and moved back to the Boston area, where they were married on July 23, 1966. They took up residence in Lincoln, where her architect father remodeled a house for them. Paul worked for the Cambridge-based consulting firm Arthur D. Little, and Lucretia for the Museum of Fine Arts.

In the late 1970s, Lucretia returned to graduate school, receiving her PhD in fine arts from Harvard University in 1985 with her thesis, “Winslow Homer: Painter of the Civil War.” An academic career at the Rhode Island School of Design followed, where she was professor of history of art and visual culture from 1989, retiring as professor emeritus in 2007.

Lucretia helped found and was a board member of Friends of Modern Architecture/Lincoln that advocates mid-century Modern architecture in New England. Her post-retirement activities included serving as chair of the Lincoln Historical Commission and membership on the council of Historic New England. Her father designed the first Modern house in Lincoln (1937), which through her and her brother’s efforts, became the first of that period to be accepted into Historic New England’s Stewardship Program.

She and her husband continued to enjoy outdoor activities, cultural events and museums while traveling extensively in this country and abroad.            

Lucretia is survived by her brother, Henry B. Hoover, Jr., of Bedford. Contributions in her memory to Harvard’s Henry B. Hoover Fellowship are welcome. Checks may be made out to the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (note the Henry B. Hoover Fellowship in the memo line) and mailed to Alumni and Development Services, Harvard University, P.O. Box 419209, Boston, MA 02241.

A celebration of Lucretia’s life is planned.

In the October 24 obituary for Ted Knowlton, the name of his daughter, Polly Knowlton Cockett, was misspelled. The error has been corrected in the original article.

(Editor’s note: this obituary was submitted directly to the Lincoln Squirrel by Polly Knowlton Cockett, Ted Knowlton’s daughter.)

Edward “Ted” Almy Knowlton, 92, of Lincoln died peacefully on October 2 with his special dog, Boomer, at his feet and his wife of 33 years, Anne “Annie” (Preston) Raker Knowlton, by his side.

Ted was born to Edward “Ned” Allen Knowlton and Leila May (Osborne) Knowlton of Holyoke, Mass., on August 26, 1926 in Westerly, R.I. The family summered in Groton Long Point, Conn., where they owned the Duck, a 24-foot open sailboat which Ted skippered for many years. He attended public schools in Holyoke through grade 10, completed school at Phillips Exeter Academy, and enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1944.

At Yale University, Ted lived in Branford College and graduated in 1950 with a B.S. in industrial administration, a combination of engineering and economics. In 1951, Ted married the late Marianne (Heimburg) Knowlton, and they and their four children lived in Winchester, Mass. for many years.

Following a variety of engineering jobs, including developing an innovative line of products, six with patents, Ted gained electronics experience, capping his career at NEC Electronics by developing a floating-point math package for computer controllers. Combining his computer and mechanical skills, as well as his musical pursuits, Ted built and developed a computer-controlled precision piano tuner—with the prototype gracing his grand piano in the living room for many a year.

Throughout his life, Ted was deeply engaged in music as a jazz pianist, which built on early classical training followed by self-taught jazz improvisation during high school and university, and regular gigs for the remainder of his life, including teaching at Berklee College of Music in Boston. He cherished the myriad musical colleagues he had the privilege to play with over the years, and his legendary jazz parties will be remembered.

With his wife Annie, Ted became involved in the New England Old English Sheepdog Rescue as a charter member, and created NEOESR’s website and database. Ted philosophically evolved to embrace the abiding concepts of truth, beauty, goodness, and love.

Ted is survived by Annie; his children Laurence (Suzanne), Polly (Robin), and Liza (Clifford); stepchildren Robert (Annette), Deborah, Michael (Leslie), and David (Lisa); many grandchildren, step-grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nieces, and nephews. He was predeceased by son Edward and siblings Sylvia, Archa, Bessie, and Harriette.

A celebration of Ted’s life will be held at a later date. In lieu of flowers, please consider a memorial donation to a charity of your choice.

Lincoln resident George Hatsopoulos, founder of Thermo Electron and a life member emeritus of the MIT Corporation (its board of trustees), died on September 20 at the age of 91. By the time he retired in 1999, Thermo Electron (now Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.) had over 24,000 employees in 23 countries and worked in industries ranging from medical devices and environmental systems to bomb detectors and biomass electric generation. Click here for the full obituary on the MIT website. Click here for a video interview with Hatsopoulos for MIT’s Infinite History project.