obits

Maurice “Moe” Leo Torti Jr., 92, of Lincoln, passed away on May 13, 2024, at his residence. He was born in 1931 in Memphis, Tenn., to Maurice Leo Torti and Leah Glidewell Torti. 

He earned bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees in mechanical engineering and materials sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Engineering. At MIT, he lettered in crew and played rugby. Upon completing his studies, he worked at the National Research Corp. in Cambridge, where he developed several patents, processes, and equipment for the purification of tantalum metal. His work contributed to developing tantalum powder for electronic uses and solid tantalum forms for industrial applications. He ultimately held the title of Senior Scientist at the Norton Abrasive Co., now Saint-Gobain Abrasives. Upon retirement, he continued as a consultant for the same company. 

In 1969, he married Nancy Hunnewell Morse of Cambridge. After some years of living on the Boston waterfront, they moved to Lincoln. Dr. Torti was an avid skier, sailor, gardener, and tennis player. He was a member of the Longwood Cricket Club, where he served on the board of directors for several years. Upon retirement, he pursued a lifelong interest in sciences and humanities through the Harvard Institute for Learning in Retirement, where he attended and led classes for twenty years. 

He leaves his wife, Nancy Hunnewell Torti of Lincoln; a niece, Dr. Leah Neel Zartarian (Gary Zartarian), of Bath, Maine; and several great nieces and nephews. He is predeceased by two sisters, Alice Torti Neel of San Antonio, Texas, and Polly Jean Torti Lucas of Huntsville, Ala. 

Family and friends will gather to honor and remember Moe for his memorial service at St. Anne’s-in-the-Fields Episcopal Church, 147 Concord Road, Lincoln, on Saturday, May 25 at 10 a.m. followed by a reception in Flint Hall. All are welcome. 

Arrangements under the care of Concord Funeral Home, which provided this obituary. To share a remembrance or to offer a condolence in Moe’s online guestbook,  please click here.

Lorian Rounsevell Brown of Lincoln died after a long illness due to a degenerative brain disease. She was the oldest child of Robert Vance Brown and Majorie Waldron Brown. Born on March 29, 1941, she is survived by her brother Richard Brown (Susan McClellan) and sister Dory Rice (Kate Olgiotti). She was predeceased by her husband Joseph Urner in 2011.

Lorian grew up in Washington, D.C., and Wellesley, graduated from Radcliffe College magna cum laude, and received her M.A. from Wheelock College. She had many careers, beginning as an editor at Houghton Mifflin, then a preschool teacher and social worker in Quincy, an instructor at Wheelock College, and finally a poet.

She also leaves behind her nieces Elizabeth Lindenberg (David), Susannah Scanlon (Jon), Laurel Rice, Shanti Rice, two great-nephews Zachary and Tate, her step-daughter Katharine Urner-Jones (Larry), and her dear friend and helper Margaret Harding. Her beloved dog Josie predeceased her.

Lorian and Joe lived in Lincoln and loved working in their garden and going to the theater in Boston and concerts at Symphony Hall and Tanglewood. They also greatly enjoyed spending time at their second home in Gilmanton, N.H., where they hiked the nearby White Mountains.

Lorian was a wordsmith and played a fierce game of Scrabble. She was an inveterate reader; when she could no longer focus on a book, she would read all of the book titles, memos, and name tags around her. Funny, stubborn, prickly, and smart, she was introspective and observant, with astonishing insight into the world around her.

There will be a private burial and gathering for friends and family in Lincoln. In lieu of flowers, please make a donation to Doctors Without Borders.

Arrangements are under the care of Concord Funeral Home, Concord. To share a memory or offer a condolence, please click here.

Carol Westlake Quimby, 69, of Acton passed away at home on March 11 after gracefully living with MS for most of her adult life. Attending were her husband of 47 years, John Westlake Quimby, and their son, Paul Westlake Quimby, of Hayward, Calif. Together they have been long-standing members of St. Anne’s in-the-Fields Church in Lincoln.

Carol was born on Sept. 2, 1954 to Sarah Lance Westlake and Merle T. Westlake in Harrisburg, Penn. After her family moved to Lexington, Mass., Carol attended Dana Hall and graduated with honors from the University of New Hampshire studying studio fine arts. It was at UNH she fell in love with fellow art student, dancing partner, and husband-to-be John. After graduating they were married in a large garden party at her parent’s home in Lexington in 1976.

Carol’s professional career and studio art were always connected to her skills in drafting, graphic and three-dimensional design, and color. While living in Portsmouth, N.H. she was an exhibit designer in historic buildings at the Strawberry Banke Museum, presenting archaeological artifacts and the history of the buildings. Her extensive computer and design skills led to work in a graphic design company in Cambridge where she tested their custom graphic software and using their software, designed what today are web sites on standalone kiosks. One such project exhibited an introduction to American life in Russian that toured Russia in a cross-cultural exchange program sponsored by the State Department.

Carol ran her own business, WQDesigns in Acton. She designed and made custom jewelry on commission out of her home studio and designed personal and corporate identities. Carol also did professional computer graphics layout of several books and artist catalogues as a part of her business. She was an excellent water colorist, doing both precise still life and gestural landscapes of her many travels, and made abstract color works on paper. Later, Carol studied the tradition and techniques of religious art and wrote (painted) beautiful icons. She loved music of many forms, played alto recorder, and sang for many years in community chorus and in her church choir.  

A memorial service celebrating her life will be held at St. Anne’s in-the-Fields Lincoln on May 11 at 11:00 a.m. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to the St. Anne’s Music Fund.

Arrangements are under the care of Concord Funeral Home, which provided this obituary. To share a memory or offer a condolence, click here.

Connie Lewis died peacefully March 2 in hospice care at Carleton-Willard Village in Bedford after a brief illness.

An only child, Connie was born on August 3, 1936, in DeKalb County, Ga. to Constance (Adams) Lewis and Albert Washington Lewis Jr. Both parents died young, so Connie was raised with love by her mother’s sister-in-law, Hortense (Horne) Adams — Aunt Horty.

Connie graduated from Sophie Newcomb College (then the sister school associated with all-male Tulane). She went on to earn M.S. degrees from Cornell University in English and from Harvard University in counseling and consulting psychology.

She held a variety of positions in pursuit of her two loves, writing and teaching. She worked at an Atlanta newspaper, taught at Beaver Country Day School in Chestnut Hill, and taught freshman writing at both the Drexel Institute of Technology (now Drexel University) and Simmons College (now Simmons University). A few years later, she realized there was no future in that job, so reinvented herself as a technical writer. She took a course in BASIC at UMass-Boston and joined the startup Interleaf as one of the first few employees. She worked until her retirement as a technical writer at several tech companies. Once retired, she continued to teach writing by running memoir-writing groups at both Bemis Hall and The Commons in Lincoln.

Connie moved to Battle Road Farm in Lincoln in 1997, where it is alleged that she grew amazing Christmas cacti, conjured hummingbirds from nowhere, and made the best Hoppin’ John ever experienced in New England. She also lent her talents to the condominium handbook and served on the garden committee for many years.

An antiwar activist, Connie protested both the Vietnam and Iraq wars, holding signs weekly on busy street corners. She was also a stalwart feminist, supporting female candidates financially and fighting sexism in the work place. Connie was also active at the local level, serving on Lincoln town boards including the Housing Commission, the Historical Society, and Friends of the Council on Aging. She was a fixture at the Lincoln Town Meeting, spoke out in the local paper, and wrote voter mobilization postcards by the hundreds. Connie was also a highly knowledgeable fan and supporter of music. She was a patron for many years of Symphony Nova, a training orchestra for young musicians.

Most of all, Connie was an exemplary friend. She built long-standing friendships with both her age peers and people decades younger than herself. Thus it was that during her final months, Connie was surrounded by and cared for by friends of long standing, a family not by blood but by heart. She will be widely missed.

There will be a memorial gathering in Lincoln this spring on a date yet to be determined.

Peter Conrad, a pioneering medical sociologist who brought attention to the increasing medicalization of society, died in his home in Lincoln on March 3, 2024. He was 78 years old. He died at home, surrounded by loved ones, listening to Joan Baez. His cause of death was pneumonia after a long experience of Parkinson’s.

Peter Conrad, the author of 16 books or monographs and more than 100 articles and chapters, was a dedicated academic at Brandeis University for more than 30 years, where he chaired both the Sociology Department and the Health, Science, Society, and Policy program.

Peter Franklin Conrad was born on April 12, 1945, in New York City to George Conrad and Gertrude (Rosenthal) Conrad. They were recent Jewish emigres from Germany and Austria, respectively. Conrad always proclaimed that he was a disobedient, distracted student during middle and high school school — one of the sources of his later interest in ADHD — and that he only came alive academically after taking sociology courses at SUNY Buffalo, now the University of Buffalo.

He went on to earn a master’s degree from Northeastern University, in part to get a draft deferment from the Vietnam War. As a conscientious objector, he was assigned to do alternative service as an occupational therapy assistant at Boston State Hospital, a historic mental health institution. Witnessing interactions between patients, clinicians, and the institution provided him with initial insights that would later lead him to apply sociological tools in examining the medical system’s roles in society.

Combining this perspective with sociology’s mid-century preoccupation with “devianc,e” he wrote his PhD dissertation at Boston University, which became his first book, Identifying Hyperactive Children: the Medicalization of Deviant Behavior. Peter began to understand that the diagnosis of hyperkinesis — later called hyperactivity, then ADD, and now called ADHD — “medicalized deviance.” It transitioned a perceived “moral failing” into a medical diagnosis. This became a major theme in his research. As the subtitle of one of his most cited books puts it, medicalization transforms from “badness to sickness.”

Over his career, he looked at how cultural and social factors in medicalization shape the definitions, perceptions, and experiences of alcoholism, depression, homosexuality, baldness, short boys, and tall girls, among other conditions in addition to ADHD.

While many tried moralizing medicalization, Peter resisted that impulse. “I’m not trying to say it’s good or bad,” he’d often say. “I’m saying it’s happening and we should understand it.” Though his work was deeply analytical and theoretical, he always rejected the title of “theorist,” but prided himself on “conceptualization.”

Beyond medicalization, Peter studied the experience of epilepsy, worksite wellness programs, medical education, the social meanings of the new genetics, and illness on the internet. Graham Scambler, emeritus professor at University College London, once wrote that, when it comes to medical sociology, “people and things tend to revolve around Peter.”

Peter was elected chair of the Medical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association in 1987 and elected president of the Society for the Study of Social Problems in 1995. He was a dedicated teacher, mentor, and collaborator, and had tremendous pride in the accomplishments of his graduate and undergraduate students, even long after they became his colleagues.

Beyond sociology, Peter had an enduring interest in green spaces and rural heritage in Massachusetts. He served on the Lincoln Conservation Commission, the board of Codman Community Farms, and the community board of Drumlin Farm, a site of the Massachusetts Audubon Society. He also nurtured this interest in his annual vegetable garden, cultivating multiple potato varieties and giving many opportunities for his younger family members to squash potato bugs.

Peter was an avid traveler taking many journeys with his beloved wife and family. These included two sabbatical years abroad: one in Yogyakarta, Indonesia and the other in London. He was also a Distinguished Fulbright Scholar at Queens University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and maintained close professional relationships with colleagues there through a 20-year visiting faculty appointment.

One of the great joys of his later years was reuniting with a lost branch of his maternal lineage through family research that brought multiple branches of that family together in Munich and later in Washington, D.C. Peter spoke what he called “kitchen German” from his emigre parents and engaging more deeply with his family history was deeply meaningful.

Though born in New York, Peter was a devoted Boston sports fan, particularly of his beloved Celtics, who were a constant comfort in his last years and a joy he shared with many family members and friends. After his diagnosis with Parkinson’s in 2014, he also became deeply involved with Rock Steady Boxing at SLS in Lowell to maintain strength, mobility, and community. He was supported during this time by loving caregivers, most notably Annette and Moses Mugwanya, who were with him during the last four years.

He is survived by his wife, Libby Bradshaw of Lincoln, a physician and assistant professor at Tufts Medical School; his daughter Rya Conrad-Bradshaw, an executive in EdTech in Concord; a son, Jared Conrad-Bradshaw, an educational consultant in Istanbul, Turkey; three grandchildren, Rafi, Sela, and Avi; son-in-law Drew Magliozzi, and daughter-in-law Rita Ender, both of whom he adored. He is also survived by close-in-heart family members across the world, students from multiple generations, dear friends of more than 50 years (including multiple housemates), and a dog he tolerated. He is predeceased by his sister Nina (Conrad) Furgiuele.

Peter was buried on March 5  the Lincoln Cemetery. The family will receive visitors at their home from 4–7 pm on Tuesday, March 12; Thursday, March 14; and Friday, March 15.

Arrangements are entrusted to Dee Funeral Home & Cremation Service of Concord, which provided this obituary. Click here to share a remembrance or to offer a condolence in Peter’s online guestbook.

Martha O’Neill Pickett, 77, of Lincoln passed away peacefully on Friday, February 16, 2024. She was the wife of the late Robert Clement Pickett, who died in 2012. She is survived by her sister, Olivia O’Neill of Jamaica Plain, and sister-in-law Heather O’Neill of Petaluma, Calif. Also survived by many loving cousins and friends. Martha was predeceased by her parents, John J. and Rosemary L. (Donovan) O’Neill, and brother, John J. O’Neill, Jr. 

Family and friends will gather to honor and remember Martha at her memorial service on Saturday, Feb. 24 at 2 p.m. in St. Anne’s in-the-Fields Episcopal Church, 147 Concord Rd., Lincoln, MA. Donations in her memory may be made to St. Anne’s.

Arrangements are under the care of Concord Funeral Home, which provided this obituary. Click here to see Martha’s online guestbook.

David Lattimore, age 92, passed away on Thursday, February 15, 2024. David was a son, father, grandfather, husband, poet, translator, photographer, and professor. He was born on March 25, 1931, in Peking (Beijing), China, to travelers, authors, and scholars Owen and Eleanor (Holgate) Lattimore.

David circumnavigated the globe three times before the age of five. Evacuated from Perking in 1937 by the Japanese, the family eventually settled in Baltimore. David graduated from the Putney School ’48 and Harvard University ’52 and did graduate studies at Cornell and Yale Universities. A professor emeritus at Brown University for 35 year in Chinese studies, he prided himself on being a third-generation tenured professor without a Ph.D. (David Lattimore, Tianjin University and Dartmouth College, Owen Johns Hopkins, and Leeds University). An emeritus status was created for him at the Club of Odd Volumes.

David was a poet and spent many years translating the works of the eighth-century Chinese poet Du Fu. After studying at Yale, the family lived in Providence. After retiring from Brown, David lived with Gerry in Lincoln and Dingley Island, ME.

David is predeceased by his youngest daughter, Rosette, his second wife, Geraldine (Harrison), and his first wife, Emily (Sargent Lewis). He is survived by his children Michael, Maria Sheppard (Richard), Clare, Anne Price (Steven), and Evan (Jane); stepdaughters Karen Nazor and Leslie Riversmith (Clayton); foster children Margaret Lamar (David) and Michele Taylor (Steven); godson Sam Dennis; and grandchildren Marco, Duy Bao, John, Samuel, Eleanor, Dylan, David, Rhodec, Lenora, Frank, Jazz, and Rose.

Family and friends will gather to honor and remember David for a period of visitation on Tuesday, March 26, 2024, from 4–5:30 p.m. in the Concord Funeral Home (74 Belknap St., Concord, MA). His memorial service will follow at 5:30 p.m. Burial in Lincoln Cemetery will be private.

Arrangements under the care of Concord Funeral Home, which provided this obituary. Click here to see David’s online guestbook.

Dr. Alan Dobrow passed away at age 94 on January 30, 2024. Alan and his wife, Vicki, moved to Lincoln in 2001 after they’d both retired (Alan from his psychiatry practice, and Vicki from teaching in the Great Neck, N.Y. public schools). Their move enabled them to live near their daughter, Julie Dobrow, her husband, Larry Vale, and their four children — Mira, Aaron, Jeremy, and Jonathan — as well closer to their son, Marty, his wife, Missy-Marie Montgomery, and their children — Sarah Dobrow, Joshua Dobrow, and Jeremiah Montgomery-Thompson. Alan and Vicki’s third child, Joe Dobrow, lives with his partner, Julie Zagars, in Fountain Hills, Ariz.

Alan and Vicki first lived at Farrar Pond Village, and then at The Commons. Both were active in reading groups at the Lincoln library. Vicki volunteered in the Lincoln School until her health declined, and Alan was a long-time member of the Boston Authors Club. Vicki died in 2021, but Alan continued to be a vibrant participant in the lives of his children and grandchildren until his last days.

Those who knew Alan will forever remember his scholarly and somewhat reticent demeanor that belied his keen wit and deeply sentimental and loving soul. Alan’s reverence for books, history, the American West, and photography, and his propensity for rooting for underdog sports franchises, were all gifts passed along to his children and grandchildren. The deep investment he and Vicki made in their family will continue to pay many dividends going forward.

(Obituary submitted by Alan’s daughter, Julie Dobrow.)

Rayna Lee Caplan, 83, of Mattapoisett and Lincoln died peacefully on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024. Rayna was born in Malden, Massachusetts but grew up in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, the daughter of the late Joseph and Rhoda (Klasky) Caplan. She graduated from St. Johnsbury Academy and Lasell College. 

Rayna raised her family in Lexington and also lived in Lincoln and in her beloved cottage in Mattapoisett for her adult life. The cottage was her home away from home, where she spent weekends and summers before finally moving down permanently. She warmly welcomed countless friends and family to her cottage so they could enjoy a place she found so special.

Rayna was a voracious reader, an extensive world traveler, skilled trifle maker, expert antiquer, and lover of theater and film. A cultured, inquisitive, adventurous woman who was full of immense joy, Rayna loved others and was at her happiest when connecting with friends, family and acquaintances. 

Rayna was always committed to social justice. During the 1970s, she protested for better housing in Boston and later in life was elected onto committees for Lincoln town planning and housing issues. She marched in Washington in support of gay rights and she was a lifelong advocate for women’s rights. 

Rayna worked in corporate travel for many years, a profession she loved and one that offered her the opportunity to visit numerous countries. Multiple times per year for many years, Rayna would fly off to faraway lands with the zeal and fearlessness of someone many years her junior. 

Rayna was an incredibly warm and generous soul who, throughout her life, gave back to her communities and took immense pleasure in doing so. Whether volunteering at the Lincoln Public Library, the Mattapoisett Free Public Library, or the community centers in both towns, or caring for the elderly or for children in her spare time, Rayna had a huge heart, which is epitomized in the vast number of deep and lasting friendships she forged along the way. 

She is survived by her sister, Gloria Caplan; her stepchildren, Timothy Norster and Louise Norster Arthur; and many nieces, nephews, and cousins. She is predeceased by her brother, Harvey Caplan.

There will be a brief memorial service outside at Ned’s Point Lighthouse at 50 Ned’s Point Road in Mattapoisett on Saturday, Jan. 20, 2024 at 10:30 a.m. Immediately following the service, friends and family will gather at Bocca Restaurant at 100 Alden Road in Fairhaven.