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Elenita Cowee Chickering March 14, 2010 |
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Elenita Cowee Chickering, 96, of Etna NH, died Sunday March 14 th , 2010, at Alice Peck Day Hospital in Lebanon NH. Born on September 15, 1913, the second child of George A. Cowee and Marion (Bent) Cowee, she grew up in Gardner MA, and attended Abbott Academy in Andover MA. She graduated from Smith College in 1934, and then attended the Katherine Gibbs secretarial school in New York City, where she became the personal secretary of Mr. Gibbs, its president. In 1936 she married Howell D. Chickering of Wilmington DE (deceased), with whom she had four children. They were later divorced. As a young woman, she was selected as “a Camay bride” and her picture appeared in many newspaper advertisements. An accomplished pianist, she studied with Jesus Sanroma of the Boston Symphony, and later gave private piano lessons for many years. During the 1950s and 1960s she was a substitute teacher of French and Spanish in the Wilmington schools. She took a degree in material culture at the Winterthur Museum in Wilmington and became a docent there. Without formal training, she made herself into a recognized national expert on American arts and crafts silverware. In addition to numerous articles on the subject, she wrote the authoritative Arthur J. Stone 1847-1938, Designer and Silversmith (Boston Athenaeum, 1994), a biography and comprehensive catalogue of the most important American silversmith since Paul Revere, who also happened to be her great uncle. She became a frequent consultant to museums concerning silver. Throughout her life she was an avid and intrepid traveler, having visited every continent except Antarctica. On one trip she circumnavigated the entire globe, crossing Asia on the Siberian Railroad to Vladivostok. Frequently she would generously take a younger female relative with her as her traveling companion. She was also a life-long student of languages. She spoke or read French, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, and had a smattering of Chinese. After she moved to the Hanover area, she worked at the Howe Library for many years, and continued to be a presence there, both as a volunteer and also as a regular patron, well into her 90s. Her kitchen table was always stacked with books to be read. The dominant artistic activity in her life was playing the piano, of which she owned two, a Steinway upright and a Steinway grand. Her repertoire was usually classical, and she frequently performed piano pieces for four hands with various partners. She was also an amateur watercolorist and an expert gardener. She regularly attended ILEAD courses at Dartmouth College during the last twenty years of her life. In recent years she also became a Hospice volunteer. Her graciousness, intelligence, unquenchable curiosity, and humorous take on life are fondly remembered, and much missed, by all those who knew her, family and friends alike. Three generations of her young women relatives looked up to her as a model of active older womanhood. She is survived by her children Howell Chickering Jr and wife Sara Jane Moss of Greenfield MA, Elizabeth Bradley and companion Stan Dunten of Hanover, John Chickering and wife Carol Dimond Chickering of Etna; her former daughter-in-law Betsy Halloran of Groton CT; ten grandchildren, Kate Chickering, Julie Chickering, Ben Chickering, Maria Symonds, Edith Pacillo, Elenita Pozzy, Jeanne Giles Hackney, Brud Giles, Miles Chickering, and Jeanette Chickering; nine great-grandchildren; her nephew Stephen Cowee and her nieces Marion Cowee Hughes and Susan Chickering Bedell, and her first cousin Gardner Bent of Gardner MA. She was predeceased by her brother George Alvin Cowee, Jr, and by her daughter Nancy Chickering Giles. A memorial reception to honor her life will be held at the Howe Library in Hanover NH, on March 27 from 2-5 pm. All are welcome. Rather than flowers, donations in her name may be made to The Howe Library Corporation , 13 South Street, Hanover NH 03755.
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