obits

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. 

With deep sadness, the family of Virginia Quinn Rundell announces her passing on Wednesday, January 10 of complications from cancer.

The arc of Virginia’s life and career was filled with renewal and re-invention centered around her love of the English language, clarity, precision and grace in written communication, and her commitment to collegiality and consideration of the people around her.

A 1973 graduate of Peabody Veterans Memorial High School, Virginia received her Bachelor of Arts in English, magna cum laude, from Salem State University in 1977, followed by her Master of Arts in English Literature from Tufts University in 1981. Following early work in development and recruiting with the New England Board of Higher Education and Tufts University, Virginia began a career pivot to architecture with studies at the Boston Architectural College. Melding that interest with her background in communications, she launched a career in professional services marketing, starting with several Boston-area architecture and engineering firms, where she met her future architect-husband, Rick Rundell.

This was followed by the start of her own business, advising design firms on the designer-selection processes for state agencies, and culminated with five years as Marketing Director for Goody Clancy, a prominent Boston-area architecture firm. During this time she was also an energetically contributing member of the Boston Chapter of the Society for Marketing Professional Services, including service on the board. Virginia continued marketing and editorial consulting as she and Rick entered their child-rearing years, including over a decade as Associate Editor for ArchitectureBoston magazine, and doing myriad editorial projects for design-related organizations including Historic New England and the Urban Land Institute.

In 2012 Virginia moved with her family to Lincoln, Mass., and rapidly took on volunteer roles supporting the community, chairing the Pierce House Property Committee and serving on the Advisory Board for Friends of Modern Architecture/Lincoln. She also returned at this time to a lifelong dream of becoming a librarian. While working at the Watertown Free Public Library then the Boston Athenæum, Virginia pursued graduate studies, including internships with the historical collections at Mount Auburn Cemetery and the Gottlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University. She received her Master of Library and Information Science from Kent State University in 2018. In 2021 she combined her passion for civic engagement with her passion for libraries and archives in a new role as the Town Archivist for Lincoln, where she continued to work actively at both Town Hall and Lincoln Library sites until just a few short months before her passing.

Virginia’s love of the written word was matched only by her love of singing. She was delighted with the launch of Revels Singers in 2012 and sang and volunteered with them for many years. She also sang with the Harvard-Radcliffe Chorus over the last few years and joined two seasons of the Oxford Churchmusic summer choral experience.

A devoted wife, loving mother, wise counselor, and tactful diplomat, Virginia leaves her loving husband, Richard (“Rick”) Rundell, daughter Elisabeth (“Ellie”) Rundell of Somerville, son Ford Rundell and his wife, Katie (Cook) Rundell of Lovell, Wyoming; sister Anne Quinn of Peabody, brother Michael Quinn of Dublin, Ohio, and beloved aunt Irene Zielski of Peabody. Virginia was predeceased by her parents, Michael R. and Helen V. (Zielski) Quinn of Peabody, Massachusetts.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Virginia’s name to The Friends of the Lincoln Library, 3 Bedford Rd., Lincoln, MA 01773 (www.lincolnpl.org).

Arrangements are under the care of Concord Funeral Home (75 Belknap St., Concord MA, 978-369-3388), which provided this obituary. Click here to visit Virginia’s online guest book.

Jane Lillard Bartter died peacefully on December 15, 2023, at the age of 102.

Jane was born on July 10, 1921, in Marion, the daughter of Walter Huston and Ethel Hazen Lillard. Because her father was headmaster of Tabor Academy, she was one of only four girls to attend the all-boys school at the time, graduating in 1937. Jane did a postgraduate year at the Knox School before attending Smith College, where she majored in early education and child development.

Jane’s career as an educator was put on hold. World War II broke out as she graduated and was drafted by Naval Intelligence to serve in the war effort. She served in Washington, D.C., for the next two years as one of a group of young women now referred to as the “Code Girls.” The Code Girls worked to decipher coded Japanese transport messages, helping the Navy to identify and destroy war supply ships.

During this time, she met her future husband, Frederic C. Bartter, a Harvard-trained doctor. The two were married in 1946 and spent the first year in Guatemala, where Fred was posted by the Public Health Service to research a tropical eye disease affecting U.S. troops. They moved to New York the following year, where Jane was hired as director of recreational therapy at Presbyterian Hospital. When Fred was appointed an intern at Mass General Hospital in 1948, the couple moved to Boston. Jane was assistant director of the Simmons College Nursery School for a year and then director of the Laboratory School at Children’s Hospital.

In 1951, Fred was appointed chief of the Endocrine-Hypertension Branch at the National Institutes of Health, and the couple moved yet again, this time to Washington, D.C., where they would raise their three children, Frederic Jr., Thaddeus, and Pamela.

Jane joined the staff of the Norwood School in Bethesda, Md., in 1959, where she spent the next 18 years teaching kindergarten and eventually taking on administrative roles, including assistant to the director and a stint as acting director. Upon her retirement, she was hailed as “dedicated and devoted, concerned and perceptive — always giving more of herself physically and of her talents and time than was ever expected.”

When Fred retired from the Public Health Service in 1978, he took a position at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. The couple loved the Spanish influence and heritage of the city. Jane retired from teaching and started a new venture importing clothing and folk art from Central and South America, drawing on her time in Guatemala as a newlywed.

Jane remained in Texas after Fred’s sudden death in 1983 but eventually moved to Lincoln in 2010 to be close to her daughter and grandchildren. Always wanting to be useful, she immediately volunteered at Codman Community Farms, answering the phone and doing accounting. Incredibly, at 93, she volunteered two mornings per week at the Lincoln Schools, tutoring first graders in reading. She also joined the Church Service League at St. Anne’s-in-the-Fields.

Jane was a devoted wife and mother. She was also passionate about dogs, animal rights, feeding the hungry, and effecting political change.

Jane’s son Frederic Jr. died in 2008. She is survived by her daughter Pamela Bartter, her son Thaddeus Bartter, four grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.

Family and friends will gather to honor and remember Jane for her memorial service on Saturday, Jan. 20, at 11 a.m. in St. Anne’s in-the-Fields Episcopal Church (147 Concord Rd., Lincoln).

Arrangements under the care of Concord Funeral Home, which provided this obituary. To visit Jane’s online guestbook, click here.

There will be a service in Lincoln on January 20 for Dr. Don Bienfang, M.D., Chief of Neuro-Ophthalmology at Brigham and Woman’s Hospital and Associate Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School, who died on December 9, 2023 at age 84 after a brief illness.

Born in Elmhurst, Ill., the son of Esther (Kuhlow) and Mark Bienfang, Don was a graduate of York High School’s class of 1956 and went on to complete an undergraduate degree in Mathematics at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana in 1960, and then to Harvard Medical School in 1960. As a medical student, Don worked at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, becoming its first respiratory therapist in 1961, and held a research position in Naples, Italy. Graduating from Harvard Medical School in 1965 and following his internship, fellowship, and residencies that took him to the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Md., and the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Don returned to the Brigham in 1972 and, with his partner Leo T. Chylack Jr., founded the Ophthalmology group, beginning a nearly five-decade-long career at the Brigham.

As a distinguished surgeon and clinician, Don was known for his expertise and depth of knowledge, his warmth, and his wonderfully dry and intellectual sense of humor. Don was a true believer in listening and talking to his patients, often in their native language, to allow the patient to guide the diagnosis. Don felt honored to learn from icons in the field and, in turn, he served the Boston and international communities as a surgeon and teacher of neuro-ophthalmology with dedication and love. Along with the multitude of patients for whom he cared over five decades, Don’s professional legacy lives on in the doctors he mentored, and what is now known as Bienfang’s test for myasthenia gravis, a simple noninvasive test for an autoimmune disease that is difficult to diagnose.

Don met Denise, his wife of 60 years, in 1961, and they were married in 1964, He leaves behind two sons, Matthew Bienfang (Elizabeth) of Hingham and Joshua Bienfang of Bethesda, Md. Don was a devoted husband and a loving father, and he enjoyed and cultivated the ability to send Denise into helpless peals of laughter with his unexpected humor; one of her fondest memories is listening from the bottom of the stairs at their young son’s bedtime while Don gave their stuffed animals personalities and made them talk.

Don and Denise shared an independent-minded approach to life, and in 1974 they moved to Lincoln to embrace the back-to-the-land ethos of the time. In Lincoln, Don built a blacksmith forge, used wood-burning stoves for heat, raised chickens (and a few mean geese), and tended a large garden. Don’s chickens and their homegrown eggs became a feature of the family and community, and tending them served as a meditative evening pastime for him.

Don was not a slave to convention and he enjoyed being that way. In 1985 he slapped on a “Honk if You’re Horny” bumper sticker on his car just to see (until his family made him take it off)… he collected exotic breeds of chickens and unique power tools for his farmstead… he put offbeat cartoons on the insides of the kitchen cabinets for Denise to find… he preferred nonlethal pest control so he built a tunnel to protect the chickens and he kept deer out of his garden with his own scent… he felt a deep love for each of the dogs and at least one of his family’s cats.

He had a wonderful enthusiasm for trying new things, including baking bread, making root beer, motorcycling, playing mandolin, and painting. In the early 1960s in Naples, he developed a taste for espresso, and his sons fondly remember Saturday trips into Boston to watch back-to-back kung fu movies in Chinatown and then to the North End to get a cannoli and an espresso or two.

Don took up running in the late 1970s, and he ran the Boston and New York Marathons multiple times. He was a member of the Harvard Club and the Longfellow Tennis Club, and he enjoyed playing squash and tennis with his friends. He had an unreturnable chip shot that he deployed whenever his children or grandchildren made the mistake of trying to go easy on the old man.

Don and Denise traveled widely together, and later they turned a house on Cape Cod into a gathering point for their family and their large community of friends. Don loved being “Grandpa-Fang” to his grandchildren Micah, Britt, Abby, Caroline, Lily, and Sam. He loved to take them up to the chickens to hunt for eggs or to ride the tractor with him as he mowed the fields in Lincoln.

Relatives and friends are invited to attend the memorial service at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 20, 2024, at the First Parish Church (4 Bedford Road in Lincoln).