Obituary from the Ashfield News:

Mary Seymour Lucas; 91, of Ashfleld; died at her home on Tuesday October 7.

She was born in Sound Beach, CT on June 21, 1912, the daughter of Edwin J. and Mary Seymour Earle Lucas. She grew up in Sound Beach, attended Rosemary Hall School in Greenwich, CT, and graduated from Rollins College in Florida.

Ms. Lucas taught fifth grade at the New Canaan Country School in CT for many years and later taught at Eaglebrook School in Deerfield, from which she retired. She was a committed environmentalist, organic gardener, photographer, book lover and naturalist, and was the author of a book entitled Vast Horizons, about the age of exploration.

She was a dedicated volunteer, serving the Belding Memorial Library in Ashfield, where she was Trustee of the Year 1989; the Ashfleld Ambulance Service, and the Franklin Medical Center in Greenfleld. Also, she was a fine sailor and taught sailing and sailboat racing.

She loved dogs, and shared her home with a succession of Scotch terriers, many of whom were named Jock. Later in life she found that cats also made fine companions.

Survivors include a niece, Nancy.L. Merritt of Wilbraham, MA; a nephew, Robert L. Lucas and his wife Nancy R. Lucas of Newark DE; a niece-in-law, Dorothea D. Lucas of Mt. Pleasant, SC; a cousin, Diana Lucas of Princeton, NJ; 15 grandnephews and nieces; 23 great-grandnephews and nieces; and special friends Carlotta Chrissey Chandler, Jo Mula, Jan Freeman and Anne Judson.

She was predeceased by her brother Edwin Earle Lucas and her sister Catherine Oakley-Lucas

There will be a gathering of friends and relatives at her home on Saturday, November 8, from 2 to 5 pm, Burial will be private. In lieu of flowers, it is suggested memorial contributions be made to either Hospice at Franklin Medical Center 48 Sanderson St, Greenfleld, 01301, or to the Friends of the Beldmg Library, P0 Box 407, Ashfield, 01330.

Mary Lucas; A Reminiscence

by Jan Freeman

 

Mary Seymour Lucas. Generous, tough, kind. Wise. Insistent and opinionated, practical, and always prompt. Mary Lucas. White hair, deep voice, always a hello for the dogs, sky blue sweater, jeans, sneakers with a hole rubbed through the little toe. We met the day I moved to South Ashfield, eight years ago. She came to my front door with a container of her yellow tomatoes. In time she became my Ashfield family.

 

Early on, Mary taught me how to build a proper fire in the hearth, how to use the wood stove, how to stack firewood correctly, how to keep water in the bathtubs through (at least) the fail, winter, and early spring - to ensure plenty of water when the power failed. She intrduced me to Foster's, where we shopped together, followed by picnics of sandwiches in the car, which she parked in a perfectly sunny spot in the lot. She introduced me to CVS chocolate chip cookies (her favorite) and the Coffee Gallery's assam and lapsang souchong tea, candied sliced ginger, and bitter bitter chocolate.

 

Most people in Ashfleld knew Mary through her years of volunteer work at the library. She was a devoted volunteer - filing records at Franklin Medical Center every Thursday morning, helping Anne Judson shelve books and check out books on Mondays and Wednesdays, and helping me with a variety of tasks for Paris Press - from proofreading, stuffing and stamping envelopes, and filing, to offering feedback about material that I was considering for publication. And Fall Festival! She loved it. She baked pies for the South Ashfleld Library, she helped run the book sale at the Belding Memorial Library, and in recent years she helped me at the Paris Press table as well.

 

Mary was an avid and eclectic reader. She introduced me to the novels of Hugh Walpole and Mary Stewart, and one winter we read all of Bryher's historical fiction. Not long ago, she instructed me to read Christopher Morley's Parnassus on Wheels (hysterically funny!). Every morning we called each other to start the day, discuss the weather (it's snowing up here on West Road, I might say - no, no snow here, it can't be snowing there; or, it's raining here, no rain on Creamery, no rain at all; or sun is out, blue sky, blue sky here too). We would speak during the day to say hello, see what we were up to, if we needed help with anything. And then, in the evenings, Mary would phone to tell me to look out the south side to see the moon or the east to see a constellation or a planet. And in-between, a bear was just here and knocked the feeders down; or, it's supposed to sleet and freeze tonight, fill up a few extra pots of water; or I'm going to Greenfield, would you like me to pick something up for you; or, come along for the ride; or I'm going to Northampton, what can I get for you... When I was injured and could not drive, Mary took me to dozens of appointments.

 

Late afternoon tea, put your feet up, have a seat by the fire. Or a bourbon before supper (at seven on the dot). And how are you feeling? Scrabble on weekends with Ruth Craft and Mary Leue, and occasionally Marian Gray. What a grin when she put a good word on the board!

 

And there she was, sitting on the screen porch doing a crossword puzzle, or sitting at the kitchen table watching the birds or watching Dwight Scott attach the buckets to the maple trees. She made her famous custard for special dinners with Carlotta Crissey and Jo Mula when they visited. And we shared many dinners at my house, speaking about college experiences and summer camp, her cabin on the island on a lake in Canada, and of course her teaching.

 

Mary was, inside out, a teacher. Though I was never her student, I heard about her teaching from a friend who was in her fifth grade classroom at New Canaan Country Day School over forty years ago. My friend Lisa DeLima still has the rock collection - stored and carefully labeled in egg crates - collected on field trips. The last time Lisa visited Mary, Mary jumped up and pointed to the large slab of mica beside the hearth. That came from the field trips with your class, she said. That was decades ago. And she described visits to the Cloisters; studying the Vikings, instructing students on making bellows for the fireplace. All the books on the shelves: history, natural history, birds, mushrooms, wild flowers, trees, gardening, children's books and mysteries, poetry, biography.

 

All the vegetables harvested in her meticulously kept garden, the tomatoes growing up the round cages, the tarragon in great bushes, the fiddleheads behind the shed, the beets - the sweetest I've ever eaten -which she would dig up. She'd chop the stalks with one swing of her small machete and wipe the blade on the grass - one, two. Her raspberries. Her eggplants and monster zucchinis. The dill that grew everywhere. And Mary's birds. Grosbeaks, woodpeckers (downy and hairy), hummingbirds and cardinals and goldfinch. The first thing she did when she awoke in the morning was feed the birds outside her bedroom.

 

Walks on Creamery Road. Stories about teaching in Oregon. Canoeing. Jigsaw puzzles set upon a card table in the living room. Pushing her snow blower in terrible weather at all times of the night. Stories about driving in her old convertibles. Her trips, to Europe and Egypt, her time in England.

 

Evenings and mornings and afternoons - Mary Lucas filled my life with companionship and kindness. Life without her is as unbelievable as it was inevitable. I am twice your age, she would say...

 

May your spirit stay close, Mary. May you continue to lead me through literature and living in Ashfield, living in the natural world, seeing the natural world carefully,-and-being a part. of it. Stoic, self-reliant, and terribly self-effacing. Always concemed about being in the way, you were never in the way. During your last months, our visits were filled with the anchoring details of daily life; sometimes they were quiet and part of the terrible desertion of the body and the mind, and sometimes we trailed through Homblower; Jeremy, Wind in the Willows, "Walking through the Woods on a Snowy Evening," and "Sea Fever." I liked reading the lines of the poems in unison, or reading the first half of the lines.. and hearing you read the second half.

 

My good friend, part of the sky, holding the moon and the stars and the planets and the snow and the sun. Be without fear, Mary. Self-reliant, as much as living fully allows; dignified, as much as slowly leaving permits. May you rest peacefully with old friends and lost family again. And may you visit your friends in Ashfleld often.

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