Her
children, friends far and wide, and the communities of North
Bennington, Bennington and Shaftsbury are saying thanks for the gift
of years with Mary Hawes Kohler, who died peacefully at Bromley Manor
in Manchester on April 24, 2024.
The
Hawes, name to which Mary was born in 1934, covered a meandering path
from prerevolutionary coastal New England to Columbia and St. Louis,
Mo., (where Mary picked it up), and back to Connecticut. Mary was
visiting her mother, Janet, and stepfather, MacLean Hoggson, in New
Canaan, taking a break from her work at the world’s first tissue
transplantation lab at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, when
she met Peter Kohler.
Mary
had graduated from Smith College and went on to Radcliffe College at
Harvard before doing post-grad work in England at Cambridge on
virology and tissue culturing, leading to her first employment at
Mass General. Peter was in the graduate social work program at NYU
when he and Mary fell in love and married in the summer of ‘61.
Mary left Boston to join the faculty at Uniondale High School on Long
Island, while Peter finished his studies and counseled inmates on
Rikers Island. Mary dropped Peter off at the Freeport train station
daily before going to teach biology to ninth and 10th graders.
As
she would recall it later, she was not unhappy to leave teaching high
schoolers when the couple’s first child, Robert, arrived in ’62.
Then came Neil in ’64, Mary (Molly) in ’65 and finally James in ’67.
With
“troops” in tow, the young family shifted to the north shore of
Long Island for more space and water access. There Mary and Peter
taught their kids swimming, boating, foraging for shellfish, how to
bait a hook and filet flounder.
Mary
volunteered at Glen Cove Hospital, sang in community choirs and
otherwise brooded lightly over her free-range kids, whose ranginess
suggested needing yet more room. And so, as Peter advanced in the
ranks of the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene, Mary sought
out and found more space in remote Lloyd Harbor, where the family
settled in 1975.
With
the troops involved in school, sports and arts, Mary took a position
with Automatic Data Processing. The cancellation of mental health
care in the early ‘80s canceled Peter’s work, and the family became
reliant on Mary’s position and benefits. Peter would die in 1987,
alerting Mary to her own stress and coping, which she undertook to
remedy while considering where to live now that her husband was gone,
and three of her four children were out of the house.
Jettisoning
her office job, Mary took part-time work at a nursery while studying
institutional cooking and hospitality, soon forming a company called
“Time Out for Innkeepers.” With it she would wander the eastern
seaboard minding B&Bs and inns while their owners vacationed or
were away from their business. A single ad in the back of one
business publication netted Mary all the work she could handle, and
she took most of it in New England, where she had history and bits of
family.
The
work was gratifying but barely covered costs on the large, now
largely empty, Lloyd Harbor house. New England had, however, recast
its spell, and after 24 years of family life, it was time to leave
Long Island.
In
1991 her mother, Janet Hoggson, died in Conn., following shortly
after MacLean. Janet was the daughter of Frederick Gardner, owner of
St. Louis Coffin Co. and a one-term governor of Missouri. Janet left
Mary her share of that residual estate, allowing a more expansive
search for a new home with more land, which she desired simply so
“the dogs would have some room to run.”
With
youngest son James, Mary toured her old haunts near Smith College and
Great Barrington, Mass., looking for an old house and a few acres of
south-facing slope. When she crossed the state line into Vermont
south of Bennington, she never looked back.
As
so often happens when one knows they’ve come home, the house appears.
For Mary this happened almost immediately upon discovering the
several covered bridges around North Bennington. She bought the house
on a few acres, learning shortly after moving in that the McCullough
family across McCullough Road would be putting 200 acres up for sale.
Mary committed to it before even walking the land, as most of it
comprised the vista out her new front window. That was all she needed
to know.
Upon
closing, Mary ceded the development rights to the Vermont Land Trust
and donated 100 of the acres to the Fund for North Bennington (FNB)
to help establish a contiguous open trail system through the entire
village. She kept the 100 acres across from her house, leasing it for
agricultural use for over three decades.
Over
her long fourth act in the Southshire, Mary picked up several
volunteer positions at the local hospital, joined the Quiet Valley
Quilters, the Twisted Branch quilting society, and the board of the
Park-McCullough House historic site, She ran the treasury for the
Bennington Quilt Festival and generously supported the McCullough
Library, the summer music series at Park-McCullough and Keewaydin
Camp, where generations preceding and following her attended in
Dunmore, Vt., and Temagami, Ontario.
Mary’s
favorite days were spent piecing quilts; knitting sweaters, mittens
and Christmas stockings; making dolls and lap blankets for young
hospital patients; and running her several generations of dogs across
what the FNB would in 2006 dub “The Kohler-McCullough Fields,”
today a popular destination for dogs (and their humans) from all over
the region.
Mary
cherished visits from her far-flung family, which included four
children and their spouses, seven grandchildren and one
great-grandchild. She always kept an open door to her Bennington
community of fellow quilters, dog walkers and local friends who will
miss the creative clutter of her house and walking with her in the
fields. Everyone of us has cause to celebrate Mary’s life, as do all
those she’ll never meet who will rejoice no less for the many bits of
comfort, commonwealth and colorful Vermont vistas she bequeaths to
them.
Everyone
who knew Mary knew what was important to her. The splendor of
Vermont’s mountains, fields and woods were what she liked best to
share. If you feel inspired to do a little something in remembrance
of Mary and her love for her adopted state, she would be delighted
for your donation to the Keewaydin Foundation, 500 Rustic Lane,
Salisbury, VT 05769. You can also get in touch with Mary Welz:
mary@keewaydin.org, or at 802.352.4247.
This article appears in May 8-14, 2024.